Excelsior
by sparkstoaflame
Summary: Asami's dead. But that doesn't mean Korra won't go to the extremes to get her back. Doesn't mean she won't stretch past defined limits of morality and impossibility. Doesn't mean she won't give up everything to mend a broken soul. / korrasami — au character death — one-shot


**author's note** | scientific studies show that korrasami is very healthy for the body and the soul.

so this is a gift to my very good friend (you know who you are), who asked for korrasami, and of course i was most happy to oblige. um, started in mid-october, finished in early december, forgotten about, and published here now. ^^' i apologize, my dear, but here you go. :)

* * *

**Excelsior**

_Canon/AU._

She's dead. But that doesn't mean Korra won't go to the extremes to get her back. Doesn't mean she won't stretch past defined limits of morality and impossibility. Doesn't mean she won't give up everything to mend a broken soul.

_Korrasami._

* * *

_cover image credit to _**bunnicustard**

* * *

**I.** Clausula

_[tell me—would you kill to save a life?_

_tell me—would you kill to prove you're right?]_

**.**

**.**

(**i. memento mori** – _remember you will die_)

Blood, tepid and sticky, is coating her hands like she's wearing liquid gauntlets of crimson death when Asami dies in her arms.

And what makes this situation worse is that there's not a damned thing Korra can do to stop it.

The dark and cloudy skies above are shedding a waterfall of tears—it's almost as if the weather itself is sharing in the Avatar's grief. Cold and fat little globules of rain trail a comet tail of liquid down towards the wet earth beneath Korra's sealskin boots, where they all land with a wet _plop_, creating the clamorous and dissonant sound of a cacophony of water droplets drumming against the ground.

Korra herself is numb all over as she quails underneath the pounding downpour and howling wind, her skin as cold as liquid ice. But whether she's violently shivering from pure shock or the freezing temperatures, she doesn't know. Her head rests on top of Asami's limp, sodden hair, arms are encircled around the green-eyed woman's punctured torso while blood

_(life)_

from the gaping wound in the non-bender's chest trickles out in a thick and lethargic stream. It's hot and red, tracing its way down to drip tauntingly into a dark pool that has settled in Korra's forearms.

And the blood burns just as Asami doesn't burn.

_(she's too cold)_

And it moves just as Asami doesn't move.

_(too still)_

And it's alive just as Asami isn't alive.

_(too dead)_

Slowly, very slowly, as if she's too scared to even move, the Avatar runs her trembling right hand over the heiress's red-sprayed clothes as if she still can't quite believe what has happened—her normally vibrant cerulean eyes are as dull and blank and pale as a newly-constructed plaster wall.

And so it comes to be that Asami is being cradled in the circle of Korra's arms, who buries her cold face in the crook of her friend's neck with her legs folded awkwardly underneath her in a sloppy kneel, mumbling incoherently as she attempts to shield the girl with emerald eyes from the rest of the world. Because even though Korra's acting very much like a selfish jerk, the world doesn't _deserve_ Asami.

_"They don't deserve her,"_ the Avatar mumbles in a disturbingly wild manner, trying to convince both herself and the nameless shadows crowding around her. _"Doesn't deserve her, doesn't deserve...doesn't deserve anything..."_ This cruel, cruel world, who took away the spirit of one of its residents at too young of an age. What did it have to give to her, anyways?

It's a numbing thought that creeps through her mind as a slow, achingly sweet poison, a poison that washes over her being in an all-consuming tide before tightly clenching itself around her chest.

_[ – crash, crash, burn, let it all burn – ]_

That poison retreats somewhat when Korra feels the weight of a heavy and warm palm that can only belong to one of those who bend the element of fire light upon her shoulder, and as if it's some sort of catalyst, her head flies up to bare itself to the raw elements, torso twisting violently to the right. Ragged and soggy brown locks swing, aimless through the air like a rider's whip before they slap themselves across a pair of golden eyes. Her lips are pulled away from her white teeth in a terrible snarl while a pair of icy blue eyes promptly turns into orbs of raging azure fire that lock into a just as anguished but much calmer set of warm amber irises.

_(some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice)_

"...Let go of her, Korra." His words are spoken incredibly soft, _so soft and caring_, but _soft_ bites deep past her fragmented soul

_(because—he knows her so well)_

and into her mutilated heart like nothing else ever could.

"I know it hurts, but you _have_ to let her go."

She just so happens to crack a bit more in another few choice places at the words—at his _betrayal_, because Asami isn't gone, she _can't_ be:

"You know? You _know?!"_ She screams bloody murder at him, an anguished sound that she didn't even know she was capable of producing, right as her hand recklessly flails out—her pitiful attempt to punch that conniving bastard right across the face. "Don't you dare claim you know! You don't know—you don't know anything, you never knew anything—you _don't know anything!"_ And with this maniacal rant flying like a tempest past her lips, she roughly spits out the last words as if they are burning drafts of poison in her mouth. "Leave me _alone,_ Mako!"

_Oh, Asami—_

No—_no no no,_ whatever anyone says, she _won't_ and she doesn't let go. She'll only hug the heiress ever more tightly and let her head wilt back downwards, dark brown bangs brushing the base of Asami's neck, where the pale porcelain canvas lacerated with deep red slashes and punctuated with fresh drops of dark crimson ends. The Avatar's teeth grind tightly together as she struggles to keep in check the ocean of tears rising up inside her in a roiling tumble of crashing waves.

And Korra the hotheaded Avatar, Korra the brash—Korra who's unafraid to back down from any challenge and never _ever_ cries if she can help it finally cracks into pieces and crumbles apart, because she can't help it now in this situation—and she crashes and burns like a tower collapsing into chunks of broken rock before the eyes of all.

Asami's name is a prayer upon her bruised lips to the spirits dancing in the twinkling stars above, covered as they are by heavy black clouds, but as with everything Korra pretty much does, it's just _too little_ and it's said _too late._

**.**

Tucked deep into an alleyway looking upon this scene is a slight figure dressed in a ratty black jacket and fingerless gloves: a young woman with tortured and jaded blue eyes the color of a stormy ocean, a woman with darkness etched in every crease of her coat, a woman with the cruel touch of a smirk riding upon her lips.

**.**

It takes Mako about two seconds to realize that his ex-girlfriend isn't going to let go of his _other_ (dead) ex-girlfriend anytime soon, so he drags a raging Korra, kicking and screaming like a petulant little child, into one of the many police vehicles on the scene so that the paramedics on scene can whisk Asami away on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance.

You know, as if _they_ could help.

_[ – this hurricane's chasing us all underground – ]_

**.**

Asami's funeral shroud is absolutely gorgeous in its dark reds and midnight blacks, and it has a facsimile of Future Industries's half-gear logo, woven out of some expensive type of silk, right smack in the center of the whole masterpiece.

Mako's speech is completely heartbreaking and by the end of it, everyone in attendance has tears in their eyes (Bolin is flat-out bawling by the middle of the reception, and he doesn't even seem to realize that everyone else realizes it).

Well, everyone except for Korra, that is, who is lost and trapped in her own boiling sea of dark grief while staring out into empty space. The painfully slow funeral proceedings continue onward without her, playing like a bad movie reel in the far distance that she can't and doesn't want to focus on.

Future Industries's emblem is the first to go when the shroud is lit on fire, and Korra breaks out of her reverie long enough to narrow her eyes at the shifting masses of orange embers slowly eating their way through the cotton—because she just _can't_ take her eyes off of the dancing flames that lick their mesmerizing way across the shroud, across a sea of red silk towards Asami, so as to burn her into gray, gray bits of dust. Dust that's picked up by a soft breeze and swirls in looping circles by Korra's feet.

And even as the shroud burns, a grim sneer etches its way across her dark expression while the fire burns bright bright in front of her. The fire is doing what it does best—eating away at anything its eager sparks can reach: at the gear, at the very thing that was the cause of Asami's demolition, but even that small satisfaction is wiped away as the sparks begin to set aflame pale skin that, only a week before was glowing with life and health, until there's nothing left of the non-bender's body except for ashes upon ashes upon ashes.

_There's no more of it._

_...Everything I touch turns rotten,_ Korra bitterly thinks.

_And now there's no more of anything anymore._

**.**

When Mako comes back to his apartment after a disgustingly long day at the police station that may or may not have had anything to do with the death of Asami Sato, he finds the Avatar passed out on a straight-backed wooden chair with her forehead pressed against an old and polished oak table that's shunted to the very back of the apartment's main room—the room with the monochromatic beige walls and scratched teak floors and plain earthy tones. Her left fingers are loosely curled around a half-filled, scuffed glass bottle containing some mysterious liquid that could either be abnormally grayish-blue water, or it could be—

The firebender swears out loud and rushes to snatch the bottle of cactus juice from Korra's slack grip.

_Spirits damn the crazy human who discovered that drink,_ he irritably thinks as he tips the bottle upside down, watching the contents of the glass go _glug, glug_ down the sink drain.

"Korra?" he whispers, shaking the motionless lump of blue cloth and greasy brown hair that's the almighty Avatar's current condition. "Korra, wake up." He swallows, the dryness in his throat catching the little wad of spit unawares so now he's hawking away for another ten seconds before choking out, _"Please."_

Maybe she hears him and maybe she doesn't, but her long, tapered fingers don't move the slightest as she softly breaths out, her exhale causing a few strands of hair that have fallen out of their little blue ivory ties to flutter through the air like feathers riding on a breeze.

And Mako gives up trying to bring the native waterbender back from the beautiful world of dreams and fantasies, because he doesn't want to see the horribly blank look in her eyes that had been present ever since Asami died—and because there is a tiny crystal of a tear slowly running its way down the slope of her right cheek.

The firebender knows that sleeping people don't cry.

**.**

Mako learns quickly enough that when Korra begins to scream out in short, staccato bursts during the middle of the night, he shouldn't disturb her in any way or try to wake her up at all, especially when the yells contain the name of a certain raven-haired girl who has long since passed into the realm of the spirits.

The red finger marks around his neck that the master of four elements left behind after the firebender attempted to do _just that_ are warning enough, but what actually scared Mako the most was when Korra had wildly lunged for him. Her blue eyes, turned dark with rage, were open without seeing anything or anyone but some strange woman whose name she repeated, over and over again in a low, monotonic voice (all the while attempting to squeeze the very breath out of Mako's lungs).

The name was Anyu.

**.**

This phenomenon is not so strange anymore the next day when Mako catches wind of a rumor creeping through the police headquarters that a woman in the Red Monsoons, the triad that had been keeping a disturbingly low profile the past few months, has been behind several notorious crimes (bloodbending or not) during the full moon.

Mako's just wryly thinking that he's _really tired_ and he's _through and through_ with bloodbending, and consequentially, promptly forgets about the gossip come evening.

**.**

Korra's dreaming, and she's sure of it.

There is no world without Asami. There _can't_ be. It's simply not possible. There is no world without emerald green eyes, without the inky black lashes that frame those gorgeous gems, without her beautiful personality and soul.

But why—_oh cruel spirits above, why_—did it take Asami being killed with a knife to the neck by a Red Monsoon member (and she would be damned if she didn't find out exactly who that gangster was) for Korra to see that?

Korra isn't quite aware of what she's doing anymore. Her mind is in a right confusing haze, as if she now sees and comprehends the world through a set of frosted glasses. She has long since lost her appetite; long since stopped keeping in contact with Bolin and her parents. She drifts through the long corridors of Air Temple Island, going wherever her feet take her and occasionally running into door frames while she was at it. She quietly takes orders and obediently goes through her airbending forms and eats when she's told to eat and sleeps when she's told to sleep.

_[ – no matter how many nights that you lie wide awake to the sound of poison rain_

_where did you go? where did you go? where did you go? – ]_

Even though attempting to sleep is the without a doubt the _worst_ part of her whole day, because heavy black nightmares rip away at whatever remains of her broken sanity while she struggles, caught halfway between the realm of reality and the howling shadows that are her thick and terrible dreams, to wake. And when she finally does break free from the ensnarement of those clinging cobwebs, she takes to blankly staring at the wood grain on her wall once her pillow has soaked up all her tears for the day and fantasizes burning the whole damned place down with her _right in the smack middle of the inferno._

And she does this, she does this every night, because Korra is Korra and she's had quite a few screws knocked loose ever since Asami died.

The thoughts about burning down her world are strangely therapeutic.

_(because apparently, she's insane)_

**.**

"You're insane, Korra," Mako tells her one day during his daily visits.

"Why, thank you," Korra tonelessly replies.

"I know what you're thinking," Mako warns. "Don't do it. It won't end well for you."

Her hands twitch ever so slightly even as she maintains an even, blank composure. "And who will stop me?"

Mako glares at her and he doesn't say a word. He doesn't need to, and Korra knows this, because she turns sharply on her heel and storms out of his presence.

**.**

The part of her fractured, fragmented mind that's still functioning properly begins giving her orders.

_It's time to wake up, Korra._

_Now it's time to brush your teeth, Korra._

_Now you have to walk to the dining room, Korra._

_Bolin's talking to you Korra; now you have to laugh, Korra; now you have to eatdrinkairbenddon'tthink—_

_—whereareyouasamiyousaidyou'dneverleave—_

_—you_promised_mespiritsdammit—_

_—korrakorrakorraKORRALISTENTOME—_

_Don't listen to Mako, Korra. Listen to yourself._

"I don't want to," Korra mutters recklessly to herself, her head hanging sadly over a balcony on Air Temple Island that's overlooking the shining waters of Yue Bay.

_You should go. Now._

"But why? Is it worth it?"

_Oh, dear spirits,_ she bitterly thinks, _what was it again? 'The first sign of insanity is having a conversation with yourself?'_

But she slowly turns around, wandering back into the girls' dormitory.

And for the first time in a month, dark bursts of flame flare in the depths of the ocean blue.

_[ – no matter how many deaths that i die i will never forget – ]_

**.**

**.**

(**ii. memento vivere** – _remember to live_)

Korra's the only one out of the _KorraMakoBolin_ triangle to consistently visit Asami's grave, but the firebender in the trio makes the occasional trip as well. And the next time he stops by the marble headstone with long stalks of grass brushing the tips of his black boots, he bluntly tells the piece of cold stone, "I think that you're driving Korra crazy."

The cold autumn wind laughs as it tousles his hair, wrapping around him like a cloak of ice while wafting in the scent of fallen leaves into his nostrils. Mako sits down primly, his golden eyes narrowed to tiny slits against the biting drafts of air as thin and scarred fingers run their way across the words etched in sharp relief against the pale mottled stone.

"She's not the only one, you know."

And the clump of grass by his foot sways lazily in the breeze as if it's agreeing with him.

**.**

Sometimes Korra doesn't know what's real anymore.

This cannot be a good sign.

She is seeing Asami everywhere—in the long corridors of Air Temple Island, on the clamorous streets of Republic City, and oh good spirits above, her bedroom—and yet no one else can see what she sees.

Korra knows that she's hurting and sometimes she thinks she's ready to go insane. There's an empty pit in her chest, one filled with gloom and despair, a tightly coiled knot of anger and fury and _hopelessness_ that just won't go away. She's spending half her waking hours internally screaming at people who even so much as smile (because that just makes her even more upset) and the other half trying to prevent her bottom lip from quivering and her eyes from sprouting waterworks. And she knows she's being unfair to the people around her, but it's an emotion she can't keep in much less _describe_—it's fear, it's anger, it's helplessness at the situation at hand, but it's _guilt_ and _heartbreak_ that take the lead roles in the theater acting out her rapid deterioration into hell, because Korra loved

_(loves)_

Asami and Asami wouldn't be dead if Korra had taken the heiress up on her offer to visit Future Industries that day.

_(and she says "this is all my fault")_

At night, she doesn't move. She doesn't speak, she doesn't sob out loud, yet she still cries. And this is without a doubt the worst part of this sad fairy tale because Korra doesn't know why she's crying anymore.

_[ – the promises we made were not enough – ]_

**.**

"Are there any new developments on the case?" she innocently asks him one day.

"Yeah," Mako mumbles as a response. "They're saying that the Red Monsoons are behind it. Some woman named Anyu—"

He snaps his mouth shut right as his eyes fly wide open in alarm and he wildly kicks his chair back to shout after her, to attempt to dissuade her one last time—

—but Korra's long gone.

**.**

"...The name was Anyu," Korra blandly informs him one day after lunch.

Bolin stares at her in confusion while Pabu frisks happily underneath his green tunic. "Uh. What?"

"The name of that Red Monsoon member who stuck a knife into Asami was Anyu," the Avatar calmly replies, but her eyes betray her inner turmoil, "And I'm going to find her and I will _break_ her like she broke Asami."

The earthbender swallows at the lethal promise in her voice.

**.**

_"The monks used to say that revenge is like a two-headed rat viper. While you watch your enemy go down, you're being poisoned yourself."_

Korra stamps out the flicker of unease that is Avatar Aang and his stupid pithy anecdotes flitting around the back of her mind before she shuts the door to her room and throws the hood over her head.

**.**

("...So I am going to take these and mark down how much it covers your debt," she pleasantly informed the quaking man while relishing in the look of terror smeared plainly across his face, "and I will come by later this week to let you know how much you still owe. And you'd better be prepared with the money by then. I don't care how you get it. Just_ have _it." She smiled, a brilliant white smile that didn't reach her eyes, which are hard orbs of light blue metal.

The door to the dilapidated shack slammed shut behind her.)

**.**

"Tell me where she is."

"And why would I do that?"

"Oh, you don't have to tell me anything. But I'm sure that a return of your bending is incentive enough?" Korra grins humorlessly. "I may be wrong, but must be very...difficult to maintain your position in the upper circles of the Triple Threats without your precious_push_ and _pull."_

The man's dark blue eyes gleam with hunger.

"...What is it that you needed to know again, Avatar?"

**.**

Neither Korra nor Mako are at dinner that night and Bolin gets the feeling that there's something fishy going on.

**.**

The young dark-haired woman with pale eyes the color of a raging blue-gray ocean has her fingers splayed out like knife blades, searching, searching for a source of water

_(any source of water)_

and she finds it running through the man's veins.

She jerks her hands up in sharp, erratic movements and smirks manically as the man screams for a split second before his neck snaps with a terrifyingly loud _crack._

"Don't say I didn't warn you," she softly informs the broken body lying on the filthy street before straightening her black dog-eared vest with a sharp flick, turning on her heel to stride away from the scene.

**.**

_[ – there is a fire inside of this heart_

_and a riot about to explode into flames – ]_

She takes each step down the stairs, the sound of her boots clicking against the cold stone the only sound in the foul corridor until she begins to hear voices and the muted thrum of jazz drifting up from the foot of the stairs. Thick shadows cling to the walls to either side of her, slowly crossing over to the side to throw the door into a muddled shade of gray as her hand lights upon the scuffed bronze handle.

It's unlocked and she slowly pushes it open.

The door swings by to invite her in, and immediately her eyes are assaulted with a panorama of opulence and extravagance.

A large, decorated common room faces her in all its blazing glory. A lounge occupies the far wall to her left, its raised plush stools occupied by casually dressed men and women gambling, most of whom have crumpled paper yuans clutched in greedy fingers. Along the right hand wall, comfortable booths house a number of younger triad members, shouting raucously as they fixate upon two teenage boys arm wrestling on a low table. The rich smoke of cigars curls into the air, invading her nostrils with its thick and pungent scent.

As she stands there, remaining perfectly still, a ripple of unease slowly begins to spread like a shockwave across the room. Eyes turn towards her in confusion, several widening in surprise as the light of recognition reach their narrowed gazes. The comfortable, languid murmur of conversation has soon been replaced with tense and uneasy hissing. The eyes of the attendants are pulled towards her as their neighbors' voices carry across the room, bringing uncertainty along the whispers upon the wind. The gazes of the teenagers turn to her as well, indifferent and irate before they recognize who is standing before them and they promptly scramble backwards.

Perhaps they can eventually regain their footing if Korra merely continues to stand there, but instead she speaks to the room at large.

"Where is Anyu?"

The tension simmering in the air sharpens. A man to her right stands, tucking his hands into his pockets and smiling from beneath the shadow of a wide-brimmed brown fedora.

"Pretty bold of you to come down here, Avatar. Your authority," and at this he gestures nonchalantly, "doesn't extend as far as you think it does."

Korra turns and regards the man silently. After a long moment, she raises her hand before her, her palm turned towards the ground. A twist of her wrist and the curling of her fingers into a fist is all that's needed. The ground rumbles ominously beneath her and behind her in front of the gaping entrance she had previously stepped through a thick sheet of earth bursts through the floor, slamming into the ceiling with a resounding _thud_ that effectively stops what little lingering conversation that has remained.

A stunned silence settles upon the room as the walls tremble, leaving only the hum of a soft jazz number to float through the air. Korra shrugs the cloak from her shoulders as a number of men rise to their feet around the room, eyes black with dark intent.

She turns back to the first man, who is not casually standing anymore but is wearing a cold expression as he draws his hands from his pockets.

It is little match for the frostiness of her own narrowed stare.

"No one is leaving until I find Anyu."

**.**

The thought starts idly with _Where's Korra_ and it ends with _oh shit_.

**.**

Anyu sits in a chair with only a dimly burning candle for light, a heavy black fountain pen gripped tightly in her fingers. Drawing it across a piece of yellowed paper that would become a memo in a few minutes without much interest, her eyes fixed on the looping black characters blooming from underneath the ink, she's right in the middle of crossing a mistakenly written character out when she hears the sounds of a fight outside. Snapping wood and shattering glass sharply punctuates the air, causing Anyu to roughly kick her stool back, leaping to her feet right as a sense of foreboding races through her, sending chills down her spine while water from a vase shoved into the right corner eagerly leaps to greet her waiting fingers.

_[ – do you really want me dead_

_or alive to live a lie? – ]_

The door to the office blows right off its hinges and Anyu flinches as a fine shower of dust flakes down from the ceiling, the stream of water shaking in her tight bending grip while she struggles to regain her composure under the bright glare of a Water Tribe woman with fury and a hint of some burning intent written all across her face.

It's not as if Anyu could pretend that she hadn't been expecting this particular visit by the Avatar.

_"You."_

**.**

Korra only intends to take Anyu's bending away but mere raw intentions are not very often fulfilled in the end.

**.**

Bolin knows that his uneasiness with Korra and Mako's disappearance is justified when the firebender comes slinking home to their little apartment well after midnight with Chief Lin Beifong right at his heels (who looks royally pissed off at that).

Meanwhile Korra, with dirt and a feral expression spread across her face like an ugly mask, has handcuffs locked snugly around her wrists.

**.**

Jinora cringes as she nervously watches her father turn a brilliant shade of dark red.

"She did _what?!"_

**.**

"You almost killed her."

"I did _not."_ Korra slams her fists down onto the metal table in heated denial.

"That Anyu woman is in the hospital with first-degree burns seared all over her face and your fire completely destroyed her lungs." Lin scowls at the Avatar, her arms crossed in a no-nonsense attitude. "She'd be better off dead."

And Korra merely sneers at her.

"She deserved it."

The metalbender gives her such a withering glare that it snaps without words, _Did she?_

Korra turns away, fingers curling into tight fists. "I knew that none of you would get it, so—"

"I _understand,_ Avatar, that this was about revenge and that you just ruined the woman for life!" Lin interrupts with steel lacing her tone. "You can't just go around dishing out vigilant justice whenever you feel the need to do so."

_"I'm_ the Avatar," Korra hisses, whipping around to face the chief of police.

Lin slaps the manilla-colored envelope down on the table and stiffly points to the door. _"Get out."_

"Fine."

"No, I mean _out_. Get out of my city." The metalbender shoves the folder into Korra's stunned face. "And _stay out_ until you've learned to properly control yourself!"

Inside, Korra's mutilated heart finally breaks into little bits and fractured fragments.

_[ – no matter how many lives that i live i will never regret – ]_

**.**

_"You shouldn't have done what you did, Korra,"_ Aang says.

Korra turns her back on the Air Nomad's spirit and blocks him away before venturing into the Spirit World.

**.**

"I know what you want, Avatar _Korra,"_ the darkness leers, slithering around Korra like the monster of a spirit he is. "And I can give it to you. I can give you everything. I can put you into a universe where this Sato girl is indeed alive. But you will have to pay a high price. Oh, yes, a very high price indeed." He cackles.

"Tell me what it is, and I will willingly give it up," Korra says back in a voice devoid of any emotion or empathy.

The spirit of chaos lets out a harsh laugh and he hisses without a hint of hesitation in his voice, "Give me your memories."

**.**

**.**

_[do you really want me dead_

_or alive to torture for my sins?]_

* * *

**II.** Novum

_[what are you waiting for?_

_i'm not running from you]_

**.**

**.**

(**iii. carpe diem** – _seize the day_)

Apparently Korra was wrapped up in a waterlogged black cloak with her dark brown locks plastered to her face when Captain Hong Li of the United Forces found her washed upon the shores of the Fire Nation capital, gently bobbing in the waves but otherwise utterly motionless.

Mako receives the telegram a mere two hours later and rushes to rejoin the Avatar who was told to get her ass out of Republic City as fast as possible, and while she had complied with Lin Beifong's demand, _why did it have to end in this way?_

The firebender arrives the following day at dawn, his hair a mess and amber eyes bright with a demonic and feverish intensity, but even he stops in his tracks when he sees her.

Because with Korra dressed in such drab colors, is it so wrong to mistake her for a dark angel that came straight from the shadows?

**.**

"Anyu's dead," Bolin informs his brother with a quavering voice over the shaky connection of one of those newfangled devices that allowed people to contact others over long distances—what did they call them?

Ah, yes. The _telephone._

Mako can almost see Bolin biting his fingernails away at a record pace in between the awkward pause while his normally stoic amber eyes cloud with unobscured grief on the other end.

"...I knew that already. And well, um, speaking of Anyu...about Korra." He coughs, a forced cough that sounds fake even to him. "She was, um...she was found washed up on the shores of the Fire Nation." He speaks his last words quietly, his irises drifting downwards to survey the cracks on the dirty ground and his tone wilting into the hard concrete beneath his feet in perfect tandem with the motion of his eyes.

There's a strangled gasp from the other end and Mako braces himself for the waterworks that are sure to follow.

But who can blame Bolin? A disappearance and a death of two dear friends in two weeks; if Mako didn't know better he would say that the spirits are having a little too much fun with them.

The only reason why the firebender doesn't instantly hang up and run towards the gray, crashing ocean is because he—_not yet_—hasn't given up.

He can't.

Can't give up.

**.**

"Avatar Korra is still unresponsive," General Iroh comments over their tea, his dark amber eyes alight with the warm flames of sympathy.

Mako's jaw shifts to the right side as he stares at himself, pale and pallid, in the murky reflection of his already-tepid drink. "...I see."

_[ – look in my eyes – ]_

"I mean," Iroh continues thoughtfully after demurely raising the porcelain cup to his lips, "she _has_ been speaking, and the like. _Speaking_ unconsciously, as it would seem. She appears to be in a rather uncooperative condition. Tossing and turning and attempting to strangle anyone who gets near her all while talking about some being named _Raava."_ He raises an eyebrow and his cup clinks brightly against its saucer.

This reminds Mako too much of another recent event for comfort, and he quickly sets his shivering teacup back into its gilded porcelain hold before anyone can see that it's shaking violently in his grasp. "Can...can I see her?"

_Raava? Who in Agni's name is Raava?_

**.**

(There was uncertainty visible in her blue eyes, but it was only there for but a moment before she resolutely lifted her chin up.

"...Then _take_ them, and be quick about it."

The dark spirit chuckled lazily, snaking forwards to stare her in the eyes with those intricate purple designs branded upon his face—or, at least, what appeared to be his face—and started to play with mind games with her. Which, needless to say, Korra didn't appreciate.

Not. One. Bit.

"You must understand that you will be dropped into a world comprised of different, ah, _circumstances_—you will be replacing the—"

"Fine, fine, fine; just hurry up and take them!" Her voice is brimming with desperate anticipation, and then she drops her head and breathes out, "I'll do whatever it takes."

If Vaatu could smile, the grin would have been a cruel one indeed. "You would, wouldn't you? You showed the _world_ that. That you would...stoop down to such a low level for this _girl?_ To show off the infinite amount of _power_ you hold in your hands? The power to _kill_ as you please?"

_(only this and nothing more)_

"Shut up," the Avatar with too many purple bags under her eyes bluntly shot back, "and just take them away."

Vaatu merely laughed his terrible laugh once more. "I'm starting to wonder, _Raava_, whether you want these memories taken away for _Asami Sato_ or for _yourself_."

"Don't call me Raava." Korra venomously spat out the words as if they were poison in her mouth. "And of course it's for Asami."

"This is guilt speaking, Avatar." He loomed above her even in his prison; ever an omnipresent shadow. "You only want to forget what you did."

_(should have..._

_"...Let your anger out, and then let it go.")_

"I'm _not_ Avatar Aang," Korra nonsensically muttered back, her jaw tightly locked.

_("No. I'm saying this because I know that you won't be happy when you turn the page and realize that the consequences of your actions have changed the events in your..._fairy tale _up quite a bit.")_

She only clenched her teeth even harder, turning her head aside to the ground. "Stop it!" _A double meaning._

_("You killed Anyu," he accused.)_

"Just take them!"

He obliged.

And then she knew no more.)

**.**

Mako worries about Korra more than he should, what with all the relatively nasty things he had said to her about her_relationships_ in the past, but it's still an ingrained habit inside of him saying that _Korra comes first._

Old habits die hard. And try as he might (not that he's trying that hard), he just can't get rid of it.

So when Korra comes swaying unsteadily out of the room she was staying in the Fire Nation palace, she somehow manages to focus in on the firebender sitting quietly on a plush chair and then reaches forward to slug him heavily on the arm, which he accepts quietly with a small grimace and a self-conscious rub.

He had certainly expected the punch but not the bone-crushing hug that came immediately after it, much less the hot huff of her breath grazing the tip of his left ear.

"Don't _ever_ break up with me like that again, you asshole."

Mako has the urge to point out, "You broke up with me" but he merely settles for a confused blink that Korra cannot see instead, and he finds his mouth moving robotically on its own accord.

"...I won't."

**.**

The next time the brown-haired blue-eyed girl opens her eyes she has no damned clue who she is and she has absolutely no recollection of _anything_ about herself—

—oh no, wait...

...Because there's something, there's _someone_ there, a dim image of a girl with black hair and green eyes, but there's also that name ringing ceaselessly through her head—

_Mako._

Unfortunately, she can't dwell upon those trivial thoughts at the moment because she's throwing up seawater onto the sand and there are three funnily-dressed people with large and impractical hats perched on top of their heads leaning over her and they're asking her a _question_

_(who was that girl who was scared of falling down?)_

and Korra's mouth is opening and closing like a fish gasping for air on land on their own accord and she hears herself choke out a convoluted "I don't know, _I don't know..."_

Although, the humans looming over her have no way of knowing that Korra isn't answering their question but the one that is droning a flat monologue inside her head, the one that demands her attention and the one that she, curiously enough, would willingly _give_ attention to.

_(who was that girl with all the fresh greenery of spring contained in her eyes?)_

**.**

Asami Sato sometimes wonders what in Koh's realm is wrong with not only the inhabitants of Republic City but also the whole planet in general.

By this point everyone's sure that Avatar Korra's mysterious disappearance means that she's _dead_ and the Order of the White Lotus is already gearing up to search the Earth Kingdom for the new Avatar, even though no corpse of the former Avatar has been found, rotted or fresh.

Mako declares all of this bullshit but doesn't do a thing to stop the rumors from blazing across the entirety of the Four Nations, probably because he wouldn't have been able to do anything to halt the raging flames of speculation anyways, and either spends his time working his smarmy ass off at the police station or holed up in his apartment room like an antisocial hermit.

In the midst of all the chaos, Bolin is off inflating his ego into overtly large proportions by acting as _Nuktuk, hero of the south!_ and Asami's just miserably trying to lead a normal life in the confusion.

The heiress decides to make a visit to Mako's apartment exactly six days after Korra's disappearance at precisely two-fifty in the morning, because really, he hadn't been acting the same since his girlfriend (apparently now ex-girlfriend) vanished. Climbing up to what she knows is Mako's floor, she jiggles the bronze-colored doorknob, which apparently chooses that it does not wish to resist her advances. Twisting her wrist to the left, Asami soundlessly opens the door, quietly stepping over and into the firebender's threshold before pushing the dark slab of wood back behind her, where it quietly shuts closes with a gentle _click._

Her bag is the first to drop down towards the wooden ground, where it lands with a barely perceptible thumping sound on the welcome mat as stale air from the inside rushes out through the little gap the unclosed zipper leaves behind. She slips off her jacket immediately after, hanging it carefully onto a thin brown coat hanger pushed carelessly to the immediate right of the door, where it limply shakes like a quivering dark shadow.

"...Mako?" she uncertainly calls, scanning the spartan-like room for the firebender with a practiced sweep of her eyes, because if there's anything she learned while she was in that doomed relationship with him it's that he could be annoyingly difficult to find at various times.

He responds almost immediately.

"Mmmmmph," comes a drawn-out grunt. "'Sami?"

The lump of black cloth on the sofa Asami previously thought was a fat bundle of coats shifts and Mako's pallid white face peeks out from the folds of the quivering mass of cotton.

The heiress's eyebrows knit together as her eyes fall upon the mountainous stack of paperwork that seemingly has no end heaped on top of the table right next to the overstuffed sofa. A few legal documents are scattered around the floor, and Asami delicately picks one of them up, scanning it superficially and without much interest before setting it demurely aside onto a nightstand standing stiffly besides her.

"You'll be rotting in front of your desk at this rate," she quietly points out.

"I"—Mako hugely yawns—"need to finish this." He gestures vaguely at the papers strewn across the table. "A few reports."

"A...few reports," Asami responds, unconvinced as she warily eyes the sheets of paper that are threatening to topple over onto the floor in a muddled mess of documents.

He ignores the tone of her voice and instead asks, "What are you doing here?"

That's a good question, and she conveniently doesn't have a ready answer for it.

"Um...to talk?"

"To _talk?"_ he grunts. "What time is it, exactly?"

"...Three in the morning."

"Three in the _what?!"_ The firebender loudly swears before the blanket gets the better of him and he goes sliding onto the ground, a mess of tangled limbs and black cloth. He pushes himself out of the constricting blankets and hobbles toward his desk. _"Dammit,_ I'll never get this done—"

"Mako...stop it." Asami leans over to pluck the fountain pen from between his fumbling fingers. "I get that you have work to do, but this," and at that she gestures to the enormous pile of papers sitting on the table, "this is going to kill you." She pulls up a chair next to him and puts a cool hand over Mako's hot palms. "Go to sleep," she suggests. "You can do that later."

"But...Beifong wants..." Mako languidly stutters, his eyelids drooping downwards as if heavy lead weights have been affixed to them, but then they snap back up as if he has just been jolted awake by some extreme purpose (only to have them fall back down again).

"Well..." the non-bender gently consoles, "think about it this way. You won't be doing anyone any favors by killing yourself."

Mako's eyes gain a faraway look to them, a look that could have been vacantly staring at a point a million miles away. A look that at the same time is present as it is detached.

"I miss Korra," he quietly muses, hugging his knees to his chest in a very un-Mako-like way.

And Asami blinks once

(—and there's a pair of warm lips that _definitely, definitely,_ definitely _aren't Mako's_ pressed against her own—)

and then she blinks twice before she shakes her head, because really, _what the hell?_

And Asami likes Korra, she really does. She likes the brown-haired blue-eyed girl—_as a friend_. But there's a strange little something shivering inside her chest that's telling her otherwise, demanding her attention by rattling loudly against her ribcage, an emotion that feels suspiciously similar to longing.

The heiress has no idea what to make of it because she _can't_ love Korra and Korra _can't_ love her because their relationship is _strictly platonic_ and Asami _can't_ even begin to wrap her head around the concept of people loving other people of the same sex.

_(can't can't can't)_

Mako's looking at her expectantly for an answer to his statement, so Asami edges carefully away from the burning questions searing themselves into her mind and replies to him.

"I do, too," she assures the firebender. "I do too."

_(how much?)_

**.**

The heavyset man in the blue parka, who's named _Kuruk_, tells Korra to find someone called Raava.

**.**

("What are you scared of?" she asked one lazy afternoon while she plays with Asami's silky black hair.

"...Falling." The non-bender slightly blushed before she gestured vaguely up towards the blue sky with wisps of clouds racing above. "If I didn't have this stupid bathophobia I'd be probably flying _all the time_ like you do with airbending."

Korra didn't say anything but inside she was thinking that it's lucky that Asami's scared of falling because now she didn't have to worry about the heiress flying away and leaving her alone.)

**.**

"...Are you Raava?" she asks uncertainly, staring with wide cobalt eyes at the young man dressed in a muddy orange tunic floating in a blinding sphere of light front of her.

"No, but I can help you find her."

What Korra really wants to ask is, _Can you help me find the girl who made the promise to me?_

**.**

It turns out that Mako's right about the world being a bunch of morons after all because four days after their awkward conversation in his apartment, Korra is found stumbling across Republic City's docks (with about as much coordination as a drunken man) under the starlight with no recollection of anything except for her name and her title and two people called _Wan_ and _Raava_.

The funny thing is that Asami's not looking forwards to them reuniting.

Not one little bit.

And don't ask her why, because she doesn't know why herself.

**.**

Her heart thuds against her chest like it's threatening to break out from of the constricting confines of her ribcage because, _oh my spirits,_ the gorgeous raven-haired green-eyed girl is actually _real_ and _alive_ in flesh and blood.

Her arms are ready even before the force throws itself into them, and a body collides with her, shoving the breath clear out of her lungs in a sharp whoosh and she's grinning like an idiot even if she doesn't know why while her fingers stroke their way through spiked dark hair—

_—spiked hair?_

Wait a moment, this is all wrong. It can't be, she's got it all wrong

_(this isn't right, no this isn't right)_

because it's not spiky hair she's aching for but lustrous raven locks, and that girl is standing _right behind_ the irritating lump of dark gray cloth and scratchy red wool, and she's smiling a smile that isn't _oh my spirits I've missed you so much these past few months_ but it's a smile that says _well the two lovebirds are back together again, how cute!_ and Korra's registering all of this the moment she splutters into this annoying man's face and places her palms onto his chest to push him away because she's _hugging the wrong person_ and the person she wants to hug is _smiling the wrong smile._

Ignoring the look of hurt and confusion that appears on the spiky-haired man's face she locks her own shadowed blue eyes with the woman's vibrant green ones and carefully ventures, "Are you Mako?"

An awkward silence ensues and Korra winces as she feels the shock hanging frozen in the air crash down onto her like a disapproving ton of mortar and bricks.

"...Um, no, Mako's standing right there." And the ebony-haired goddess points at the man standing behind Korra, the man whose face has turned a pasty shade of white and seems to be playing with the idea of running away from the scene all together.

Korra attempts to swallow but that isn't working so well with the rising lump in her throat, so instead she dumbly comments upon the staggering revelation, _"Oh."_

It's the _worst thing_ she could have said, because condensed in that one word is disappointment and bitterness, and Korra's so shocked that she can't cover up the emotions running rampant through the tone of her voice. It's palpable to all those who are present and maybe that's also the _worst thing_ that could have happened at the moment.

She forces herself to meet the startled amber gaze of the spiky-haired man, _Mako,_ she forces herself to meet his eyes and she pulls her lips up into a quivering, completely faux smile.

_So selfish, Korra. You're so selfish._

And Korra accepts his careful embrace this time but she's too stiff and he's too awkward. So of course everyone sees right through her like her skin is made of glass.

Especially the man, the man with spiky black hair named Mako.

**.**

**.**

(**iv. carpe noctem** – _seize the night_)

("Korra," he said awkwardly, because he really didn't know how to start his thoughts without sounding blatantly insulting, "you're turning...weird in a bad way, you know that?" He slightly wrinkled his nose in annoyance, his vexation directed solely towards the girl plucking an old scroll from the dark brown oak shelf, one of the many that inhabited Air Temple Island's vast library. "I mean, I'm sorry, what with you and Asami and all, but...I just think that people liking other people of the same sex is kind of, um..._abnormal."_

Korra slowly turned to face him, her usual and familiar cocky grin completely gone. In its place is a thin and hard line. "...Excuse me."

"What?"

"Are you speaking out of jealousy, or are you saying what you actually _believe?"_ she heatedly snapped back.

He didn't have an answer to that.

"That's what I thought." Korra sharply rolled the yellowed scroll up and marched stiffly out of the room, her shoulders squared together as if she was preparing herself for whatever she would meet in the hallway.

Maybe he's imagining things but Mako heard something else—a small thing, really, something known as a close friendship—irrevocably snap shut along with the spool of parchment.)

**.**

_[ – i tried to be someone else – ]_

She remembers.

**.**

(_"Promise me_ that you won't leave me? Ever? At least"—at this she gathered Asami's icy cold hands in her own warm ones—"at least, you know, until _I know_ you're not scared of the sky anymore." And she smiled a crooked smile that leaned to the left, tilting her head up to face the night sky that has sparkling shards of ice thrown all across its arms and folds. "I mean, uh, not the sky. Falling down. It wouldn't do you any good if you became a spirit when you're scared of falling. They say that each of the stars up there," she gestures vaguely with a hand at the blackness above, "is an individual spirit. How would you feel hanging up there for eternity, huh?" A loose train of chuckles floated out from past her lips.

"Scared?" Asami rolled her eyes, giving the still-laughing Korra a small shove to the right. "I see. So this is coming from the high and mighty Avatar who's scared of dark rooms and can't sleep without a stuffed animal in close proximity."

_"You mean_ by 'stuffed animal', a four-hundred pound polar bear dog whose name is Naga, and Naga looks pretty alive to me, thank you very much. You know, the little things," she teased back with a smirk. "And you, scared of flying. Scared of falling, spirits." She laughed again.

Asami hummed her response. "Fair enough. And...as for the _spirits in the stars_ thing, at least I'll still be able to make sure that you won't do anything stupid in the unlikely case that I do happen to die young, hmm?"

"But you won't die," Korra replied, the touch of a smile still playing around her lips. _"I_ won't let you and _you_ won't let yourself. And we're never _going to_ leave each other hanging. Right?"

"Well, it certainly sounds like something out of a cheesy romance novel," Asami mused back.

Korra flushed a bright shade of red.

_So...can you promise me that?_

Cue pause. A tight squeeze of her fingers. Brought her dark raspberry colored lips close to the other girl's ear and lightly said:

"...I won't. I promise."

Korra didn't say anything back, but the faint upturn of her lips said all that needed to be said.)

**.**

She remembers _all_ of it. Her life in that other universe. Every single tiny facet of it. Every single aspect, every single act. She remembers the emotions

_(crushing, horrible, suffocating depression_

_burning, furious, scorching souls)_

the conversations, like

_("korra, why do you_ do _this to yourself?"_

_"...because i cared. because i still_ care."_)_

and there's a tight knot of fear and dread settling uncomfortably in her chest, spreading its slow, aching poison like icy fingers reaching their way through her body, because she realizes that Vaatu indeed kept his word, that she's in a world where Asami is alive—

—but the really terrible thing is that _Asami's just not hers._ And Korra's not Asami's.

In many different ways she's pretty much back to square one, and this doesn't sit very well with her fragmented conscience.

Now Korra is dangerously close to going back to her fantasies in which a burning Air Temple Island collapses onto herself and crushes her deep into the earth. So she does the only thing that makes sense to her right now.

She buries her head into her pillow and waits.

Because it really is rather humid in the room and she wouldn't be surprised if _water suddenly started condensing on her face._ In the form of salty drops of water.

Even though shedding tears has been the only thing she's been doing a lot lately.

**.**

From outside the flimsy bamboo door that has some coarse paper stretched across its thin panes a woman with emerald green eyes attempts to swallow against the lump in her throat as she watches the Avatar behind the screen shake with silent sobs and convulse with the desperation one must experience if she's watching someone die. And Asami thinks that she can hear Korra quietly whimpering, which is strange in and on itself because _Korra never whimpers:_

"Why?"

(—scorching and desperate kisses, hot hands and soft lips: _definitely, definitely,_ definitely _not Mako's—_)

_Why?_ Asami who doesn't realize her feet are silently carrying her next to Korra's bed asks along with the Avatar who doesn't realize that she's being watched over.

_Why?_

One word that asks such a big question. A question that she doesn't have any answers to.

As soon as Asami stops next to the mattress, burning sapphire eyes snap open in the night, the lids slightly puffy from salty tears; eyes that permeate the thick darkness like a bright beacon of light as they indifferently lock onto a pair of emeralds before blinking once in recognition. And then a single word tumbles out past Korra's lips:

_"Oh."_

It is the word that she uttered upon realizing that Asami was _definitely, definitely,_ definitely _not named Mako_ but this time the "oh" isn't said lifelessly and with disappointment. Instead it's slightly surprised, as if she can't yet quite believe that Asami's standing right over her bed, to which the heiress immediately flinches at because now Korra must think that she's some kind of perverted stalker.

_"Um,"_ Asami scrambles futilely for a logical excuse that explained exactly _what_ she is doing standing over the Avatar like this, "I was, er, I heard you...talking...in your slee_mmph!"_

"Slee_mmph!"_ isn't exactly Asami had intended to say (she didn't even _know_ what she wanted to say) but she doesn't exactly have a choice because Korra has somehow got a tight hold on both of her arms, a grip that conveys need and_want,_ and not two moments later she's pulled down and the Avatar's lips crash into Asami's and then just like that _they're kissing._

_[ – finally found myself – ]_

They're _kissing_ and Asami is suspended in a highly awkward and cramped half-crouching, half-standing position which Korra easily resolves by sharply tugging the non-bender down into the bed with her right fingers tangled through Asami's hair, and every single part of Asami is screaming _holy shit what am I doing_ and _this is so wrong, this is so spirits damned wrong,_ but for some reason she isn't pulling away; she _won't_ and she _can't_ pull away, and all she really _can_ do is melt into the Avatar's soft touch and fly up and up and up without any fear of hitting the roof of the sky.

**.**

The next few days after their mad make-out session can only be described as _awkward._ Because again, Asami doesn't know what to _think_ about what happened there and she doesn't really try to.

So she makes it a point to avoid Korra for the next few days while she attempts to sort out her rebellious, tumultuous emotions (which doesn't end up happening).

Even though at one point they all end up at Kwong's Cuisine for dinner, at _Asami's_ suggestion—_all_ of them: one slightly jumpy and totally-clueless-to-the-events-that-happened-three-days-prior Mako; one Bolin with an ego that is still much too large for his own good; Asami of course...and then there's the not-so-amnesiac Avatar who may or may not have a thing for the girl with green eyes given her actions middle of the night a few days ago.

The heiress's stomach slightly rolls over because she thinks that Korra leans more towards the _"may"_ end of the spectrum and this thought does not mix well at all with the creamed spinach sitting in front of her, something that looks unappetizing at its best but with Asami's jumbled thoughts running at a million miles an hour it may as well have been inedible.

Asami catches the Avatar sneaking furtive and slightly desperate glances towards her in between courses and through the protective barrier wound tightly across her shoulders that is Mako's arm. And Asami tries to concentrate on her food, the taunting blob of white-and-green vegetables sitting smugly in front of her, untouched and uneaten, but Korra _keeps on looking at her_ and it's starting to seriously piss her off to the point when she drops her fork with a loud clatter against the glazed porcelain plate, causing Mako to frown at her in surprise and Korra to flinch violently.

"Korra, can I talk with you?"

Mako's eyebrows disappear into his hairline, and his questioning gaze lingers on Asami while Bolin continues to eat but Korra slithers out from under the firebender's arm and promptly shuffles outside, her shoulders squared and hands clenching into tightly locked fists.

"...Asami?" Mako asks with an uncertain lilt to his tone.

"I'll be back soon," she assures him with a smile. Although anyone can tell that the smile is forced and there's thin-lipped irritation and anger behind its sunny façade.

And she follows the Avatar out of the restaurant.

**.**

("You lied," she heatedly accused the starkly shining marble headstone, the lone halo of light rising like a second moon against the somber cloak of night. "You lied to me, Asami, about _everything."_

_Are you even listening to me?_

"You lied about _never leaving,_ you lied about not 'dying young'." Her shoulders jerked up and down with sharp, terrible sobs. "You lied about getting over your stupid fear of _falling._ Falling, for the spirits' sake!"

Of course, the spirits hadn't been very dependable of late.

"You weren't supposed to _die,_ you jackass...that was never part of the plan.")

**.**

"We made a promise to each other once," Korra distantly says once they're both outside with a flicker of a defiant expression passing across her face. "And, um...I remember everything. I mean, I didn't know that when Vaatu sent me here I'd replace the Korra in _this_ universe and she would replace me in _that_ one. Which you're dead in. I mean," and Korra hastily backtracks because a dark expression has settled upon Asami's perfect features, "well, you _were_ killed in. And then a lot of things happened"—which she conveniently didn't elaborate upon any further—"and...here I am."

Asami arches an eyebrow. "I don't see how that has to do anything with the promise."

"I...we would...never leave each other..." Korra falters slightly before blurting out with a wild and desperate look in her blue eyes, _"Are you scared of falling?"_

Green irises affix the Avatar with an unreadable look. "...No. Why?"

Korra can almost see her own expression crumple into despair and disappointment, and something just _shatters_ inside of her into a million pieces like broken shards of glass glinting upon the ground. Something called hope. Hope, the thing she clung onto after Asami died. Hope, the thing she embraced even as she spiraled into the endless stinking pit that is depression, the hole that's calling her name, that she's dangerously teetering over the edge of again. Hope, the thing she held tightly even as her physical hands were occupied with burning the life out of Anyu. And now even that's being snuffed out in the wake of those two words, because an Asami who isn't scared of falling isn't _Korra's_ Asami.

"...Oh...okay."

Lifeless and crushed.

The heiress remains silent for a long moment, but eventually she turns to walk away and whispers,

_[ – you said you wanted more – ]_

"In any case, I'm not the girl who made that promise to you."

The first thing Korra thinks after that is:

_...Oooh spirits above, she did_ not _just say that after_ that _night happened._

Then a not so polite phrase races through her mind that she doesn't dare voice but is pretty much equivalent to the words "screw everything". Because really—_screw everything. Anything, anything, anything._ With that one short comment she sees the beginning of the end of everything she's _done_ to be reunited with the girl with emeralds for eyes, and Korra doesn't think she has the heart or the will to go through what she did all over again.

"Asami..." she hesitantly whispers, her exhaled breath condensing into a cloud of warm white mist in front of her in the freezing night air.

But the heiress doesn't turn around, instead choosing to disappear around a bend in the street with her head down, and Avatar Korra watches the heiress leave her for a second time and lets out a broken exhale from past her bitter lips, because in so many damned ways _rejection_ is quite a bit more painful than _death._

**.**

("You killed Anyu," Mako bluntly accused as soon as Lin Beifong unlocked the heavy outer door that shielded the metal interrogation room from prying eyes and sidestepped away to allow him inside before slamming the door back in her wake.

"I did_not,"_ Korra immediately spat back, unable to keep the poison and indignation and pure vehemence from creeping into her voice. "I...," she spluttered incoherently, a drowning woman groping for handholds, "all I wanted to do was to _hurt_her! I wanted to make her feel the wounds I felt! Because—because _you_ know and _I_ know that there's almost nothing more painful than realizing that another human took the person you love most in the world and _killed_ her in cold blood!" Her fingers clenched into white-knuckled fists, her nails digging deep into her palm and leaving half-moons in their wake.

"You did the same thing to Anyu," Mako flatly replied, staring at her with a smoldering golden glare.

"I..." Korra looked slightly lost at that. "I, I just _wanted_ to cause her agony, I wanted her to _suffer,_ I _wanted_ to take her by the neck and _choke_ her in a very public manner, I _wanted_ the Four Nations to know what that bitch had done to Asami, I_wanted_ my revenge, and I would get it." Her eyes lit up. "Although, you should know this anyways, what with your _dead_mother and father"—and at this she frostily glared at the flinching amber-eyed firebender—"she practically killed _me_ when she stuck that stinking knife into Asami—"

This, of course, didn't sound like Korra at all. But then again, Korra hadn't been sounding like Korra for the past few weeks anyways.

_(darkness there and nothing more)_

Mako tightly pursed his lips. "You go on about explaining how when Anyu knifed Asami she, by extent, hurt you—what about her own family? Friends? Relations?"

She answered in a terrifyingly blunt manner: "Does she even have any?"

"What kind of—what kind of...question is that?!"

_What kind of person have you turned into?_

"In any case, _someone_ made her that way," Korra sneered. "Maybe it was one of them. Who knows? How do you know they care about her?"

"What—but—you just _jumped_ into the situation without any regard for—"

She's a _Red Monsoon_ member!" she shouted back as if that was a plausible answer to everything. "One of the worst!" She hesitated for a moment, an action that is not lost on Mako. "She...ended up dead _herself._ Because the spirits willed it." She spoke the last words in a whisper.

"Do you really believe that?" Mako scowled fiercely as a response, quickly rising to his feet.

"Yes, I do," she coldly responded, moving to leave, but Mako quickly barred her path.

"No. Don't go. Korra...look, you're so _cynical_ now, whatever the hell happened to you? The death of one person couldn't have screwed you up this badly. If I had been killed like Asami had would you still be going around, seeking to get your hands onto the murderer at whatever the cost? Heck, you gave Viper's bending back, and for _what?"_

"You and Asami are two _very_ different people," Korra hissed back noncommittally with the ice snapping like breaking bones clearly evident in her tone. And the barb bit deep into him, poking at the beating red thing nested snugly behind his ribcage, but he resolutely stared back, meeting her terrible glare that could have contained everything or nothing within its dark blue depths without flinching.

"We may be different, but that doesn't justify what you _did_ to Anyu, whether she be a Red Monsoon member and murderess or not. At the end of the day, you've pretty much killed her. She's been damaged, _by you,_ beyond repair."

"I'll say to _you_ what I said to Beifong," Korra lowly retorted, "that she _deserved_ being burned like that. Nothing more and nothing less."

"But at the end of the day she's going to die of her injuries!" Mako pounded at the wall with his fist, shouting at the stoically unimpressed Avatar, who by this point was simply grew more and more expressionless as he in turn grew more and more furious. Somewhere in the back of his mind Mako noted wryly to himself that their positions in this argument were seemingly reversed, given that Korra was usually the one who lost her composure first when they bickered, but the thick red haze of anger and frustration quickly bats that thought aside. "And she did die! And you literally _just_ told me that you didn't want her to die!"

He was rambling now but he didn't even know what was coming out of his mouth anyways.

Korra didn't answer, but she lowered her blackened gaze to survey her ratty, worn brown sealskin boots planted firmly on the polished metal floor of the room.

"You let," the firebender struggled, gloved hands gripping the thick and dull iron bars to his side before he launched into his spiel once more, "you _gave_ one of the city's most notorious criminals back their bending _just_ to get revenge on one person. You let your emotions overtake you."

"Why, that's very hypocritical of you to say so, when you very clearly just lost your own spirits damned head a few moments before."

Korra didn't actually say "spirits damned" but Mako just decided to ignore the swear that actually did come flying out of her mouth right before her lower lip curled with contempt and she got right into his face.

"Why would you care about my business with Asami and Anyu, anyways?" she lowly asked, those oceanic blue eyes brimming with the crashing waves of mistrust and anger as some old memory apparently awakened in the recesses of her mind. "After what you outright _said_ to me in the library? That there was, oh I don't know, apparently something _wrong_with me?"

Mako flinched violently this time. "...Korra, I didn't mean that and you know it."

"Then what," she bit back heatedly, "did you mean?"

"That—that you're not yourself anymore," Mako hastily changed the subject. "You haven't been, ever since Asami—"

"Don't even go there, you moron. And I'm _still_ Avatar Korra," she tightly snarled, her lowered voice trembling with barely checked rage.

"Yes, you are. But _Korra_ would have never resorted to something as contemptible as torture. _Korra_ wouldn't have bent down so low into the possible ensnarement of murder. In any case, look where it landed you," Mako hardly retorted with all vanishing traces of fury coming back full force, his stony amber eyes gleaming with irritation.

"...You don't know that."

"You're being _thrown out_ of this city, Korra—do you understand that?" His voice sharpened with frustration as he pounded heavily at the intricately carved thick metal wall next to him with his fist, angry tears starting to spring up at the corner of his eyes. "You're being _thrown out_ because you let your feelings govern yourself; you're being _thrown out_ because you burned half of someone's face off and seared their lungs with firebending; you're being _thrown out_ because you're such a damn self-centered _idiot_ and you tried to take matters into your own hands!"

"I didn't—"

"You didn't _what?_ So you're the Avatar! You can do anything you want! You're the Avatar, so everything you do _will not_and _should not_ be questioned! You're the Avatar, so you can run around the city and serve out your own form of destructive vigilante justice and then you can just sit back with your feet propped up onto a table while others clean up the mess you've made—"

"You know what? I'm done with you." She stiffly looked away before she said, "Get out of my way."

_[ – you're killing me, killing me – ]_

And Korra didn't say the last sentence furiously, she didn't say it with any form of malice or spite, but it was so blank and lifeless that Mako instantly backed away without another word, let her brush by him without another word, watched her stalk away without another word, and he slid down the metal wall to sit on the floor before he tucked his knees into his chest, put his head down, and for the very first time since his parents died, he cried.)

**.**

Two days later, Korra receives a small, cream-colored envelope with her name written on its flap in carefully drawn calligraphy. There is no other identifying mark but she can pretty much guess who sent it.

The letter begins with _Dear Korra_ and it ends _with I'm sorry but **we** won't work out_ and it's only two and a half paragraphs long but by the time Korra finishes reading it she's ready to blow Air Temple Island apart from its seams, the last airbenders and herself be damned.

The Avatar burns the pretty piece of stationary with its immaculate and neat characters written upon it in dried black ink up right afterwards, where it dissolves into dark gray bits of dust after a single spurt of orange flames shoots out from her hot palms.

The residual powder drifts down like little gray pieces of dirty snow and it lands in her hair and all over her midnight blue armbands, sprinkling the dark tones drawn directly from the earth and sea with flakes of salt and pepper.

Korra decides right then and there that she's seen so much ash that all of it would last for a thousand lifetimes to come and then promptly buries her head in her arms because she doesn't even want to think about going through everything she did to get to where she is _again._

So she doesn't think about it.

So she thinks of _anything_ but that.

So long as Asami doesn't die _again._

...She can wait. She can wait.

_(no she can't)_

**.**

**.**

_[fighting for a chance_

_i know now, this is who i really am]_

* * *

**III.** Exordia

_[fate is coming, that i know_

_time is running, go to go]_

**.**

**.**

(**v. semper fortis** – _always brave_)

Once upon a time that didn't exist in this world, Korra had dragged Asami outside for the fifth time that week to watch the sun set. The heiress had stopped her and had asked what she liked so much about watching the sun cycle through its preordained path—so much, that the Avatar always stopped whatever she was doing at the moment to look at the clouds tinged red and orange beyond for a few precious minutes.

And Korra, without taking her eyes away from the sunset, had said cryptically, "They're always reliable."

"Er, _reliable?"_

The faint beginnings of a smile touched the edges of Korra's lips even as the sun slid below the jagged line of mountains. "Well, sunsets and sunrises...they...they always _happen_, you know? Long after you and me have gone...there will still be the sun, and its cycle. Following a yesterday there'll be a tomorrow. I mean..." She sighed, tightening her lips in frustration. "Sunrises and sunsets are eternal, in a way," she finally said, and maybe that wasn't the right word for it, and even as the sun dipped below the horizon the closing of Asami's hand around her own told her that the heiress understood.

**.**

Every evening, Korra sneaks out of Air Temple Island so she can watch the slowly fading sun throw its soft and muted rays of pink and orange across the face of the craggy mountains bordering Republic City; so she can watch it dip below the fuzzy line of the ocean line's horizon to make way for the tiny dots of shining stars that shyly emerge from their hiding places underneath Agni's blinding light.

It's really rather stupid, and she knows that. Watching the sunset is more for sentimental reasons than anything else. Sunsets are certainly pretty (and perhaps more importantly, _they always happen)_, but sometimes, when she watches the pale streaks of day fade away only to deliver the world into the icy and black embrace of night, she's brought back to old memories she would very much like to forget.

**.**

("I just wanted to _hurt_ her...she ended up dead herself. Because the spirits willed it."

_Yes._ A _spirit willed it. Because I willed it. And I'm the Avatar._

Mako eyed her with something akin to disgust in his flaming amber glare. Disgust, at what she had become. Disgust, at what she did. Disgust, unveiled and unobscured, at Korra the Avatar who's never-ever-wrong. "Do you _really_ believe that?"

She met his orange fire with her blue ice. And the smooth lie rolled straight off her tongue.

_No, Mako. No, I don't._

"Yes, I do."

She could see it in his eyes. Eyes, which betray so much of a person's character. Of their innermost, rawest feelings. Eyes, which she had always avoided looking at when she fibbed, which was why she was such a terrible liar. Eyes, the physical window into the soul. Eyes, eyes, eyes.

And Mako didn't voice this thought, but those eyes told Korra everything she needed to know.

_You're a terrible person and you know that Asami would have never wanted you to do this. You can say all the 'I'm sorry's you want and it won't change anything._

_I know. I know, I swear I know that. And I know that this is redundant but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry._

But he didn't say that.

And she didn't say that.

And Korra hated Mako for realizing that. And she hated herself for it, too. Because she had just about killed someone whom she didn't mean to kill. She had taken away someone's life, and the thing was that _it was so easy._ And it was so satisfactory. Because human lives are so fragile. It's just like snuffing out a light on a burning wick with her fingers. All it takes is one good pinch and it winks out. Finished. Terminated. Gone. Dead.

Forever.

**.**

"You're a monster," Korra bluntly told the Water Tribe girl standing in front of her (who seemingly had been waiting for the Avatar's very arrival), right after she locked the entryway behind her with thick and impenetrable bars composed of interlocking sheets of earth.

Anyu simply smiled at the raging master of all four elements standing right in front of her, casually bending a stream of water an arm's length away from her torso, but the expression didn't reach her eyes, which were crazed and danced with the wildfires of fear. "...That's cute."

Korra was not certainly expecting her to say that. "...Excuse me?"

"I said, 'That's cute'," Anyu patronizingly answered, her shaded blue eyes glinting in the dim light. "...You say that...as if I didn't know that already." The stream of water hung in the air at ready, a shivering glob of liquid that reflected the light of a single candle present the room. "Go on. Take my bending, _Avatar."_ Eyes narrowed with distaste at the last word. "Or it was...an eye for an eye, a life for a life."

Her chest was heaving, as if she were struggling to catch her breath after running a marathon; a feverish and really quite insane light danced wildly across the surface of her eyes, one that Korra half-expected was probably spread in a glassy film across her own. She certainly felt psychotic enough, what with a clouded mind and a racing heartbeat and fingers that robotically clenched and relaxed on their own.

_She's unreliable,_ a dark voice hissed inside her head. _Don't listen to what she says. She's gone crazy._

_And what about yourself?_

The Red Monsoon member smiled again, a dark smile that was closer to a sneer than anything, as if she could read Korra's conflicting thoughts.

"But I bet you're too soft to do that. I bet that Avatar Aang is advising against it right now. Because Avatar Aang was a pacifist. Wasn't he? I mean, he was an Air Nomad, and Air Nomads didn't like war...but in the end, how did that 'no military' thing work out for his race?"

"It didn't," Korra muttered through tightly gritted teeth.

"Of course it didn't." Anyu carelessly waved the Avatar's remark aside. "War is part of every society. And with Aang, it's actually kind of funny if you look back on it. Avatar Aang, the last of the Air Nomads, took down Fire Lord Ozai, whose home nation destroyed Aang's entire culture and his race to boot. And then, you look at it when Aang only took away Yakone's bending when he could have nipped the problem _you_ ended up facing in the bud. His sons, both of them, almost ended _you_ in turn, in their own ways. Aang's successor." She laughed quietly. "I guess that if he had only killed Yakone—who, by the way, you probably want to know was the leader of the Red Monsoons in his time—you would have never had your precious bending taken away in the first place by Amon. But Aang didn't kill Yakone..." She trailed off. "I guess that the question is, do you have enough restraint to do what he did? Or do you have enough stupidity to—"

"Your taunts are starting to tire me."

"Then let me put those taunts aside and educate you instead." The barest hint of a pretentious smile still played across her face.

"You don't need to _educate_ me about anything—"

"I'd suggest listening to your predecessor," Anyu idly responded, twirling a lock of her hair around her index finger. "At least in this situation. Take this from a, what did you call me, _monster_ who's been stuck at the end of that path ever since." She leaned in ever closer, so close that Korra could see her exhaled breath send the tips of her dark brown bangs fluttering through the air like a set of thick streamers. "And I'm telling you right now that you don't want to go on this road. The final destination is not very pretty."

"Are you saying this because you don't want to get hurt?" Korra hissed, a few strands of her hair falling down to brush lightly at her eyelashes.

A small pause as Anyu's eyes flicked to the door.

"...No. I'm saying this because I know that you won't be happy when you turn the page and realize that the consequences of your actions have changed the events in your..._fairy_ tale up quite a bit."

Her irises, the color of the pale blue-gray ocean when it rains and storms, are still crazed and tortured and anguished.

_You don't want to. You really, really don't want to do this._

_I do. I do. I really, really do._ Korra narrowed her eyes. "But I'm not Avatar Aang."

"No," the black-haired girl quietly agreed, slowly drawing back and letting the stream of water drop from her bending grip. "I don't think you are. But that doesn't mean that you don't have to listen to him."

"..."

"I see," she said as if Korra had even so much mentioned something remotely of interest. "...Have you ever been discriminated? Oppressed? In any way, shape, or form?"

Korra blinked.

Anyu's gaze immediately darkened and then dropped.

"They _always_ blink," she sourly muttered, seemingly to herself. Then she looked back up. "The oppressed eventually, whether it be in the smallest or largest of ways, become the oppressors. I mean, I'm living testimony of that...for me, it was the Agni Kais." She pointed stiffly at Korra. "What was yours?"

Korra wasn't sure whether this whole "asking a lot of questions" business was some very strange quirk that Anyu had or if the Red Monsoon member was actually trying to get something out of it.

"I don't think it was...no. No, no, no. _Stop."_ Korra wildly shook her head. "Stop it. Stop this. Stop your...just stop playing mind games with me." She lunged desperately at the Red Monsoon member, who hastily turned aside with the lapels of her coat flapping in the small breeze created, leaving Korra's palms to slap loudly on the wooden table. "And I'm _not_ an oppressor! I'm _not!"_

Anyu blankly stared at her for a few moments before righting her balance, and she took a step forwards to face the Avatar. "I never said you were."

"You implied it!"

"I'm only asking you some _life questions."_ The left corner of Anyu's lips curved downwards ever so slightly as she drew in even closer. "Well," she breathed, the manic light still dancing in her eyes, "if you don't know your catalyst, let me guess at it."

"I came here because you killed Asami," Korra said through gritted teeth.

"I follow my orders," Anyu snapped heatedly, the first show of true anger she had displayed in front of the Avatar. "And it's_Avatar Aang. Aang this_ and _Aang that_ and _Aang everywhere_ and _Aang was so perfect_ and they probably also said, _Why aren't you as good as he was?_ The White Lotus, I mean. That's what they're called, yes? So with them and Avatar Aang...'holier than thou'. Aren't I _right?"_ She shouted the last words, spraying Korra's face with flecks of spit.

Korra stood there in front of the Red Monsoon member who had a triumphant smirk on her face while she stared into those eyes, the kind of eyes that when people look into no one can find anything, because either there's merely blackness there or what is there is hidden so deep that it isn't visible. The kind of eyes that can contain either absolutely_nothing_ or absolutely _everything._

The pale-eyed girl took the subdued Avatar's stunned silence as an appropriate answer and reeled back. "So?" she hissed. "Those white glowy eyes? Or..."

_I'm not Avatar Aang. I'm not Avatar Aang._

_That doesn't mean you don't have to listen to his advice._

_But she killed Asami. This is coming from_ her. _She killed Asami in cold blood. Cold-blooded murder._

_...She said she had orders._

_She still killed her._

Anyu backed away.

_To take away bending? Or take away a life?_

And the moment she looked down, the tiniest of smiles still playing across her lips, Korra answered the question with two blazing fistfuls of fire.)

**.**

Korra can't help but wonder if they're still her stars. The stars that she saw back in the other world, the stars that she used to devotedly watch every single night, whether she watched them by herself or with others. Mako, Bolin, Asami.

This was all before Asami died, of course. Before her life got turned on its head and careened sharply backwards.

But the stars are never changing and they're infinite and they're _always there._ And like sunsets and sunrises, that's what Korra likes so much about them.

Those very pretty and _very eternal_ stars that are slowly rising and sharpening into clear focus in lieu of the setting sun above of her indicate that it's late. But Korra doesn't care about that.

"...Korra?"

Underneath her dark blue parka the muscles across her shoulders shudder and then tense up into tight knots at the sound of the achingly familiar voice.

"Korra? Are you okay?" Bolin promptly sits down next to her, a warm presence that she would have thought only as comforting on any other day, but only serves as a kickstarter for simmering dark memories to rise up currently. "What's the matter?" He hesitantly stretches his arms out for a hug.

"Nothing. And _you_ tell me what _matters. What matters_ anymore, anyways?" Korra bitterly mutters, scornfully turning away from Bolin's outstretched arms.

"Well, for one...um...how about smiling?" the earthbender hastily offers, taking a hasty step after her. "Come on, Korra! I haven't seen that in a long time! You know, they say that smiling can really boost your happiness—"

Very much not smiling. "Because there's nothing to be happy about."

"Sure there is!" He tightly wraps a warm and heavy arm around Korra's shoulders, ignoring the Avatar's snarl of blatant protest and she tries (unsuccessfully) to slip out from underneath his tight grip. "See, isn't the sunset so pretty? Look at all those _colors!"_

_(surely not the colors that you shine)_

There's a small pause as Korra ducks her head down even further. "...Bolin, the sun has already set." _Still refusing to look at the sun that obviously hasn't set yet._ "And will you let go of me now?"

"Nope. Oh, c'mon, Korra—look!"

Very much not looking. _"Bolin."_

"Seriously, Korra, just look, it won't kill you. The sun hasn't set!" He points with his free arm at the thin strokes of ruddy reds and oranges that sit right over the mountains, all of the warm hues melting smoothly into the cool dark blue and black shades of night. "Well, the sunset looks happy, doesn't it? It's all warm and red and orange! They're all happy colors! Especially red. You know." He grins in a very unsubtle manner. "The color of Asami's—"

"Blood," Korra flatly interrupts, her thoughts turning back to the stains that have long been washed out of her armbands but still ghost over the fabric. "It's the color of her _blood._ I've seen enough of that. And spirits damn it, let me go!" She swats sharply at Bolin's arm but he still doesn't relinquish his grip.

"Um. I was going to say lips. But you know, blood works too! Because blood's also life, you know," the green-eyed boy immediately responds.

"And death."

Bolin's cheeks puff out as he sighs dramatically. "Listen, Korra, you can either look at a glass of water that's filled halfway and go, 'hey, look, it's half full' or 'it's half empty'. And you were always a half-full girl! Weren't you?" He measures out a wide distance in between his hands that definitely isn't a glass half full of water. "...But now you're half-empty." The distance between his palms shrinks to almost nothing, accompanied with a comical frown.

The Avatar scowls, her right eyebrow twitching ever so slightly with barely concealed irritation and rage. "You never made any sense," she lowly says, and she knows that it's rude and impolite and plain _inaccurate_ to say so but she just wants Bolin to go away and leave her alone.

_(because i haven't had enough of that lately)_

"And definitely, you aren't even _remotely_ making any sense right now."

Bolin wisely decides to ignore her jab. "Oh, come on, Korra. I mean, like, everything has two sides, right? You, me, Mako, Asami." He gestures towards the sunset. "Even colors. Hey, do you want me to describe you in colors?"

Very much not amused. "No. Why would you do that?"

"Because...colors are simple? Oh, I know!" He sticks a finger up in the air, waving it like a white flag of surrender. "Because you used to _be_ really, really colorful."

Korra, who has definitely never worn a rainbow-colored wig or clothes for that matter, arches a single skeptical eyebrow. "Now, you're _really_ going crazy."

He laughs. "I mean, you wore a lot of blue, but your personality wasn't like, _monotonous_ or anything like that. It wasn't monochromatic. Now you're just...gray. You don't smile or laugh or even get really angry anymore! You're like a piece of rock. Er, no offense or anything."

"I told you already that there's nothing to smile about—"

"Well, there's certainly something to get angry about, isn't there? Like red! Red's the color of love and anger and _hotness!_Hey, look, red was really you. You were all fiery and passionate! Like Mako!"

Korra coughs, the tips of her ears turning a bright shade of crimson. "That sounds _really_ wrong when taken out of context."

"Huh? Taken out of context? What context...oh." Pause. _"Oh."_

Bolin looks so taken aback that the corners of Korra's lips twitch upwards.

"Hey, there's that smile!"

This of course wipes the thin-lipped grin right off of her face.

"Well, you know what I mean. Not like Mako fiery. But that's not the point, and now you just sulk. So...you know. You're not exactly, uh, _red_ anymore."

She's scowling again. "Of course I'm not. I never was; I'm not _bleeding to death."_

Bolin stifles a sigh, staring at his friend's hunched over figure and half her face thrown into dark shadows. "Korra..."

"Whatever." She abruptly stands up, scattering a few bits of grit that lay strewn across the floor of the observation deck while carefully brushing invisible specks of dust off of her dark blue parka, the one that's rimmed with snow-white fur. "I'm tired."

The earthbender stares after her with regretful and wide green eyes as she descends down the scarred iron steps that lead to the exit of the Harmony Tower.

"I'll always be here, Korra! If you want to talk to someone!" he calls out to her retreating back.

The figure swaddled in dark blue halts for a mere moment, but then continues her meandering path downwards to the earth.

She doesn't turn around.

**.**

Asami's a terrible person.

_I'm a terrible person,_ she miserably thinks, leaf-green eyes fixing onto the wood grain of the table, before they flick quickly to the right to spare a fleeting glance at the small clock perched on top of the mantelpiece, calm and unmoving but for its second hand.

_Tick, tick, tick._

She can't help but think that it sounds like a bomb. A bomb ticking off the seconds until the spring inside of her finally snaps open and she melts down into a puddle of some mystery substance that would eventually get cleaned up by a ragged cloth and mop.

_Tick, tick, tick._

_Where there are questions, there are answers._

_Tick, tick, tick._

The memory of _heartbrokenhopelessshattered_ lingering in Korra's eyes after Asami turned her down, the gaze that offered a pure window into the ocean blue, twists the white-hot knife already buried in her heart even deeper. The gaze that spoke in more volumes with silence and soul rather than sound and words.

_Tick, tick, tick._

_You know that she likes you...but is the reverse true as well?_

_Tick, tick, tick._

She wants to tell Korra that, _"Look, it'll be okay. Without me._ You'll _be okay."_ But then she'd be lying because she'd be pretending not to hear, _"No, I won't be."_

_Tick, tick, tick._

_No. Yes. I don't know. Idon'tknowIdon'tknow._

_Tick, tick, tick._

"Argh!" With tears pricking at the corner of her eyes, she snatches the clock and hurls it against the wall, where it shatters with a _clink-clink-CLANG_ and heavily falls onto the carpeted ground without a sound. As if the clock represented fanatical and wild dreams and wishes and now she's broken them against a plaster wall. And then she takes her hands that are covered with a fine blanket of silver metallic dust and clutches at her temples, eyes squeezed tightly shut and her chest heaving with deep, shuddering breaths.

In the hazy darkness she sees a pair of blinding blue irises an inch from her nose and she feels a dark, warm arm curled around her neck. Possessive. Protective.

And it's so real, just as that one night was surreal.

_(it's too warm)_

So absolute, just as that one night was fleeting.

_(too immediate)_

So there, just as that one night wasn't..._was._

_(too alive)_

Asami's eyes fly open as she gasps a strangled gasp, pale arms instinctively pushing herself off of her chair and onto the ground, but the phantom Korra isn't there. No one's there. Nothing's there, except for the shattered silver shards of the broken clock pockmarking the wooden floor with bits of glitter and metal. Shreds of the remnants of mere fragments.

_(see her when you close your eyes)_

**.**

"You're a damned bastard" is the first thing Korra spits out when she sees Vaatu locked in the Tree of Time.

He replies in a mocking tone of voice that only adds fuel to the burning anger twisting around like a beast a bay in her chest. "I sent you where you wished to be, Raava. Nothing more...and nothing less."

"You sent me here for yourself. You knew that Harmonic Convergence was coming. You're using me to break out of your prison in here." She crooks an accusing finger at the dark spirit.

"Bah! Look who's talking." Vaatu rolls around in his cramped prison. "I was not the one who demanded to put you into an alternate reality. You asked so of yourself. I merely...ah, helped you along."

Korra's eyes sharpen into icy blue knives that can probably cut through cast iron as easily as melted butter. "I'm going to kill you, Vaatu, and I am going to enjoy it."

(You don't want to end up like Anyu.

blink_blink_**blink**

_"You don't want to go down this path."_

flash_flash_**flash**)

_[ – i don't want to live a lie that i believe – ]_

"Don't bother," Vaatu leers, turning to face the Avatar from behind his cage. "I can assure you that you are already dead."

**.**

"I think you should go talk to her," Bolin suggests one balmy evening when they're lounging around the earthbender's former home in the attic of the Probending Arena.

"...I did already. Look how well that turned out." Asami glumly traces a dark red-painted fingernail across the wooden table that is conveniently sitting right in front of her, chipping some of her nail polish off in her agitation. "She said something strange about an alternate universe...I think?"

Bolin only protests loudly, throwing his hands up into the air: "She's pushing everyone away, even _Mako,_ and when she won't talk to _Mako_ you know something's up. You know, she's been acting so...antisocial ever since we went to Kwong's Cuisine." He hesitates, trying to catch Asami's eye, which is an objective difficult to complete because the non-bender is trying to avoid just that. "Mako told me that she talks in her sleep. About you. And something about not being Avatar Aang. Oh, and she came back into Kwong's looking like a _kicked baby turtle-duck!_ What did you even say to her back there...?"

Asami blinks once, and then twice, and she winces.

Bolin patiently waits.

"I—I told her I wasn't scared of falling."

"But, uh, you _are_ scared of falling."

The heiress's head drops down as she stares at the bustling, glittering streets of Republic City below them. "...I know."

"I mean, the way she talked about you..." And then Bolin's throwing his arms around her, such a sudden move that Asami almost falls from the overstuffed couch and onto the gritty floor.

"Just, do it again," the earthbender nearly begs, his lower lip quivering. "She looks completely _down_ all the time and I tried to make her feel happy with _colors_ but it didn't work and she still isn't happy and I can't do anything about it and I don't want to think...I don't want her to—"

"...I can't." She sighs, a sound that's tired and exhausted and simply defeated. "I...Bolin, really, just tell your brother not to give her up, okay? They _belong_ with each other."

So why does she sound so distant when she's saying the words? Why does she sound upset? Why does she keep_forcing_ herself to—

"You know," Bolin mumbles tearfully into Asami's jacket, interrupting her silent train of thoughts, "this isn't your fault. No matter how much you think it may be, it isn't your fault."

Asami doesn't answer, but when Bolin finally lets his close embrace around her form go, she makes her move.

**.**

True to his words, Bolin offers his apartment as a meeting place and then faithfully drags a confused and slightly irritated Mako out the door before he closes it quietly behind the two of them.

They sit in a thick and awkward atmosphere, one that's composed of an uncomfortable silence and humid air and the heavy weight of hesitance. Korra has seemingly become infatuated with the cleanliness one of her armbands, stiffly picking off invisible specks of dust from the dark blue fabric, while Asami occupies her time by looking anywhere her eyes fall on save for the agitated Avatar sitting right next to her, when said Avatar suddenly starts talking.

"You died," Korra starts, her eyes briefly closing for a brief moment as she relives the mental agony of another life, another place. "A...Red Monsoon member knifed you. In the chest. I didn't, I _couldn't_ cope with your death. It came to the point where I started seeing you _everywhere..."_

Asami pretends not to notice the fleeting and worried look the Avatar gives her because Korra's always doing this: constantly making sure that she's really there.

"And..." she hesitates for a moment before speaking up again:

"I ended up," and at this she swallows with a dry throat, "I mean, I...indirectly...sort of...killed, um, someone...?" She says it as if it's a question.

Asami narrows her green gaze while Korra nervously gnaws on her bottom lip.

"Eventually, I went to Vaatu, and he offered to put me a universe where you'd live." She swallows with difficulty again, and Asami notices the way her fingers tighten over her severely bent knees. "I didn't know that I would replace the Korra in this world...I mean, I'm sure Vaatu must have mentioned it at some point, but I don't think I was paying any attention. And I didn't know that my choices would lead to..._this,_ but...I still gave him everything in order to be here. My other life and my memories."

"So if you somehow knew that this would happen," and at this Asami blinks languidly at the empty space before her as if she doesn't care the slightest for Korra's response, "would you still have done it?"

Is _killing a human being_ for _Asami,_ out of all people, really worth this?

And is _hurting Mako_ or _will be hurting Mako_ really worth this?

"Yes," Korra fires back without the slightest hint of a hesitant quaver in her flattened tone. Because Asami Sato is the only person or thing she refuses to ever give up. She wouldn't in this world, and she wouldn't in the next. Not in this life, not in the others either.

"Korra..." Asami watches as her fingers tighten into exasperated fists on her lap. "Look, I have a company to run, and I promised myself that—"

"You also made a promise to _me,"_ Korra fiercely points out, tightly clenching her jaw to the point when it starts to ache while her blue eyes burn with barely concealed anguish and blatant frustration. "Are the memories coming back yet, Asami?" she demands lowly.

Asami doesn't answer her, but her silence answers Korra's inquiry with the affirmative.

"You promised me that you'd never leave, but you _did_ leave! You _died,_ and now you're alive—you're _here_—but I'm _still_waiting for you to come back. I...," she runs an agitated hand through her hair, her eyes still bright with frustration and desperation, "spirits _damn it,_ Asami—"

_I love you._

_[ – in the beginning was life_

_a dawning age – ]_

_Breathe,_ Korra silently begs the heiress. _Just breathe. Please._

"I have to go," Asami suddenly declares, still feeling as though she's accomplished absolutely nothing from this.

Korra turns away—_too quickly_—while mumbling softly, "Don't you always?"

It's a remark that's supposed to sound bitter, but somehow it ends up sounding broken instead.

Asami pretends that she didn't quite catch that—pretending is pretty much the only thing she's been doing a lot lately—and she stands up from her sitting position beside the Avatar. And in a last, split-second, _stupid_ decision, she quickly leans down and gives the Avatar a light kiss, half cheek, half lips. And even as Korra closes her eyes and her lips unconsciously part, Asami quickly pulls away before that can escalate to something entirely different—

—only Korra's hand closes around Asami's wrist, and it pulls the heiress back to her, the tip of her nose just touching the curve of Asami's cheek while her other hand digs itself into the heiress's long black tresses, fingers entwining themselves with the silky strands. Asami's wrist is caught in a vice-like trap, and Korra's breath is pleasantly hot against her own cool skin.

Feeling something odd burn through her eyes—are those _tears?_—Asami tries and fails to keep the traitorous drops of salty water from falling, and she untangles herself from the Avatar before she can even think about letting her cheek rest on her shoulder and drown herself in the essence of the salty sea, and even as she's turned around she completely misses the expression written on Korra's shadowed face.

**.**

**.**

(**iv. semper fidelis** – _always faithful_)

"She just needs time, Korra," Mako quietly says, sitting next to his (ex?) girlfriend with a comforting arm draped around her shoulders like a scarf.

_(one time two times)_

The hunched over figure that is the Avatar doesn't respond but every crease, every tensed muscle in her body screams that _It's all over_ and _I don't know what to do I just don't know_ and _please please please go away._

"Look, she's being stubborn," Mako tries again; trying to reason with the bereft mind of a shattered soul, trying to reason with the Avatar who never ever ever took no for an answer.

"I don't...Mako, I really—_really_—didn't mean to—" is all Korra manages to croak out before the golden-eyed firebender presses a single thin finger against her lips to silence her ramblings.

"I know." A heavy yet barely audible sigh follows these two words. "I know, Korra. Believe me." He bites his lip. "I'm sure Asami will come around eventually. She always does."

"Right." Downcast eyes. A fractured, halting exhale blown softly out past bitter and cold lips, and then softly adds,_"Always."_

_("i have to go..."_

_"don't you always?")_

**.**

Korra learns that Mako—_for once_—is right.

**.**

("Finally finished designing the new model." Asami sounded happy. "One more week."

Korra raised an eyebrow over at her, fingers lightly brushing the heiress's knuckles. "I've waited this long. One week should be nothing. Oh, and isn't your birthday coming up?"

"I never really—"

"Oh, come on." She rolled her eyes in an exasperated manner. "It'll be fun! You know it."

"Hmm...well, who says you get to decide?"

A heart-stopping smile, and her lips brushed over Asami's cheek.

"I do.")

And finally, _for once_ in her life, Asami decides to follow her heart without question and go wherever it tells her to go.

**.**

There are footsteps approaching Korra where she sits heavily on the dock, her legs dangling carelessly and limply over the clear waters of Yue Bay. Her feet are bare; the light brown sealskin boots that usually cloth them lay in a disorganized heap at her side.

"Korra?" a voice calls. "Um...can we talk?"

Korra closes her eyes, letting her hands root themselves firmly onto the rough wooden surface of the dock before she distantly answers, "What's up?"

The heiress sits down next to her, a cascade of wavy raven black locks forming a flimsy yet solid curtain between the two of them. "I want to tell you something."

The brown-haired girl doesn't react as much as she thought she would. "I guess...fire away."

"...I lied."

_[ – we dream out loud – ]_

Blue eyes, while still guarded, open in unconcealed confusion before their owner carefully responds, "You...lied?"

"Yes." An awkward pause.

"I'm scared of falling."

_Breathe,_ Asami silently begs. _Just breathe. Please._

The Avatar watches her, momentarily stunned, while Asami sucks in a rattled breath. Tucks her hair behind her ear with a slightly shaking hand.

The small ripples formed by the breeze rolling across the top of Yue Bay strokes the tips of Korra's toes, pleasantly cool and silky soft, but Korra isn't breathing because she's forgotten how to _breathe_, and she still isn't breathing when Asami's head settles onto her lap, a tentative and comfortable weight. And those eyes—oh good spirits above, those _green eyes_—the ones she spent ages thinking about, dreaming about; the ones framed by long inky black lashes, they blink up at her, and the barest hint of a smile is visible on the corner of Asami's painted lips.

Korra thinks that she makes a sound that's halfway between a strangled gasp and a convoluted, weak laugh of happiness and _finality_, but she can't be sure because she still isn't spirits-damned _breathing_—

_Breathe. Breathe. Dammit, Korra, just breathe..._

No, that is definitely _not_ happening any time soon.

Although she could live in warmth of that kiss forever.

**.**

But now here's the stark truth as it is that no one ever wants to hear, the one that whispers quietly, _Not all endings are filled with sunshine and rainbows._

center**.**

When Vaatu breaks out of his prison in the tree trunk and fuses with Unalaq, Korra's there to combat him and so are Mako and Bolin and of course Asami.

And because Korra doesn't want Asami to die in her arms with bright crimson blood pouring down and into her hands_again,_ she makes sure to keep a sharp eye out for the green-eyed girl on the battlefield. Which is unfortunately an impossible and frustrating task in and on itself because they're separated _again_ when a dark spirit dives down into the snow and promptly sends Korra careening backwards into a shadowed white drift, which she emerges out of with powdered snow dusting her brown hair like Yue the moon spirit and cold icy flakes thoroughly coating her midnight blue armbands.

And she's looking, looking, looking, but there is no girl with long raven-black locks and bright green eyes among the dark spirits swarming the snowy tundra. Not in between columns of raging flame from Mako. Not weaving through slabs of rock thrown by Bolin. Not under sharp blasts of air from Tenzin. Nothing. There's no sign of her.

And then comes a laugh. A laugh that sends chills racing down her spine, a terrible laugh that causes fear to rattle her bones and grit her teeth.

She still can't see Asami and maybe that's because there's an ephemeral crack in the ground after Vaatulaq, Unavaatu, whatever, hit the ground and opened a massive rift of howling black chaos in the world of spirits. It's a yawning, terrible black maw that flashes with blinding strokes of purple lightning and swirling darkness, baring its shadowy metaphysical teeth as it widens at alarmingly quick rates.

And there's someone falling into it. Someone only distinguishable by their eyes, eyes the color of a leaf in the summertime. Which could be Bolin, but he's still earthbending rocks at dark spirits and is very much not falling into bottomless chasms.

So it's Asami. It has to be Asami.

_Holy mother of Raava—_

Then the pit burps.

It's a hot burp that sends a brilliantly purple shock wave rippling across the ground, blasting Korra's eyes with light and blinding her momentarily in the process, vibrating deep into the very skeleton of the earth, and with it comes a layer of writhing violet energy. Tendrils of glowing technicolor streamer lines that seal the crater shut, trapping Asami along with it inside.

Korra opens her mouth and for a moment doesn't do anything because she can't do anything.

Then comes a loud shout. And it just comes tumbling out, rolling off of her tongue.

A snarl. A word.

Unavaatu only laughs again and lunges for her.

**.**

The fight is disjointed. All of it. She can't distinguish between all the factors being played in the conflict. Not the battle. Not herself. Everything's fractured into colorful little pieces, random pieces, the kinds of things she sees when she looks into a kaleidoscope. Nothing's comprehensible. _Nothing nothing nothing._

She's completely shut down. Whether it is from terror or shock or anger, she doesn't know. It's all instinct taking over. Water, earth, fire, and air.

_(energy in your souls)_

Even though in the end, it's just another conflict. Just another battle. Just another game. She has been fighting battles and she's been playing games her entire life. But no one can deny that this is a different battle, a different game. Set apart from the others.

Wherein

He is Vaatu. She is Raava.

He is dark. She is light.

He is chaos. She is order.

He is Yin. She is Yang.

He is the void. She is a star.

And this has always been, ever since the beginning of time, ever since the concepts of Vaatu and Raava blinked into existence in the primal soup of swirling chaos. Black and white. Dark and light. Often, they are defined as evil and good.

Which don't exist.

In the world, it's just dark. And it's just light.

Where there is no good in evil. Where there is no evil in good.

Where there is dark in the light. Where there is light in the dark.

**.**

Their fight is confusing. Attacks are thrown and a quick retaliatory strike flashes back. All in a span of seconds.

Unalaq is gaining the upper hand, through a few tricky maneuvers, whereas Korra is slowly being crushed into a pulp within the iron fist of desperation.

They rise in different elements. There's an air vortex. And there's a water spout.

She throws rocks. He brings waves. She falls down, and he rises over her.

There's the snaking water whip, charging towards her like a malicious version of Lin Beifong's metal cables while screaming for her death, being thrown at her face. Freezing cold wind whips her hair around, scraping her cheeks with their razor sharp gusts. And here's her shield, a thick slab of frozen ice that groans dishearteningly when the tendril smashes against its protective wall.

There's the madness in Unalaq's blackened gaze. And there's adrenaline coursing through her own veins.

Here, the ice shield breaks and she's being plowed through the snow at record speeds, rough bits of ice slashing her cheeks even more raw and bloody than they already were. He's thrown her, wounded, into a bank of snow: laying defeated, while he declares himself triumphant.

She can see him towering over her, a grim and condescending sneer etched across his bony features, as the bringer of her eternal doom. And he lands on the ground with a thud and the crack opens beneath his feet, much like the crack that sent Asami spiraling down towards the nameless pits of darkness.

The opening of the rift snakes towards her, an unrelenting force that couldn't be stopped by possibly anything. Snow is shaken into its gloomy depths even as she teeters on the edge of its precipice before falling into the chasm, muscles locking together to prevent her fall. She's horribly cramped inside the small space, the forces of the rock pressing against her sides enough to make a claustrophobic scream. The cliffs dig into her flesh, intent on pressing her into nonexistence; a cold bolt of fear blinks into reality, sweeping its numbing effects throughout her being before reaching her very core, enveloping her mind in the black emotion of pure terror.

_Oh, Raava, I'm going to die._

She glares up at the figure that is Unalaq, eyes squinted against the biting drafts of wind howling down into her prison, teeth bared into a defiant snarl even as the poison of panic lances through her body like silver arrows, drawing all the heat and warmth from her body and causing cold sweat to break out across her forehead.

_[ – time is running out_

_time to do or die – ]_

Unalaq and Vaatu.

_Empowered._

Korra and Raava.

_Consumed._

**.**

And now she's

_(FALLING_

_FALLING_

_FALLING_

_DOWN)_

There's Unalaq. He's perched right above her. And she can see him. He's closing in. Muscles tensing. Rolling. Shivering. Bending the ice and snow. Bending her into the earth. The cliffs are locking together.

They're suffocating. They're driving every inch of breath out of her body, and what little air she does have she can see streaming out of her mouth in a cloudy white mist.

No air. _There's just no air._ She's completely and utterly terrified. Immovable. Trapped. Unable to push out against the jagged edges of the cold, cold walls that trap her in this fatal prison.

_no_

_nononono i can't let myself go like this_

There's a shout coming from somewhere above her, but she can't pinpoint it. Black spots dance in front of her vision; they're taunting her, draining her, killing her.

"Give in!" the voice shouts.

She can't do anything but continue to be crushed. Continue to feel hopeless.

"Your time is _over!"_

_no this isn't happening, this isn't happening to me_

Yes. It really is.

_but this is a really stupid way to die and you know that_

_and what about Asami?_

She sucks in a pained and rattling gasp, unable to draw enough air in to even scream from the dull and crushing pain.

_she fell down a hole too, you know_

_and she's scared of falling_

_but you're not falling down, are you?_

_there would be ten thousand years of darkness, until the next Harmonic Convergence_

Maybe it's her overactive imagination, but she thinks she hears a few ribs snap. Like she's already melting, to become part of the snow.

_"Korra."_

_Asami, where are you?_

_i know you fell down in a pit like this, too_

She's not exactly freefalling, though, as the walls pressing ever closer to her frantically beating heart remind her.

_"This fight is_ not _over."_

"...Raava..."

_but where did you go?_

_to the spirits, or to another world?_

_"Vaatu cannot win."_

_why can't i find you?_

_even in the darkness, where you are there too_

There's a strange and curious warmth flowing through her body now. One that wipes away all pain, one that leaves a lingering, delicious sensation behind.

By this point, she wants it all to end. All the chaos, all the struggles, all the desperation, all the weight that had been put on her shoulders since the day she was born.

And if this is what dying feels like, then by all means, _let_ her die.

_"No! Do not give in to ten thousand years of darkness!"_

Why not?

_because you've been through so much..._

_murder. anyu_

_madness. rejections_

_spirits. vaatu, raava_

_stars and colors_

_fantasies. nightmares_

_it was always like a fairy tale_

_you aren't just going to let all of your efforts sink down with you into the earth and rocks like a capsizing ship, are you?_

Her eyes are barely visible now, only the thinnest streaks of ocean blue in a world of darkness.

_"You are..."_

What? What is she actually? Nothing? Everything? _Who is she?_

_"...the Avatar."_

Those slits of ocean blue in the swirling darkness wink out of existence.

_and you wouldn't leave Asami just like that, to the darkness, to Vaatu and Unalaq_

_you would kill to get her back, to get revenge, and you showed the world that_

But maybe that wasn't the right choice.

_but you did it anyways, and what's done has been done_

_think about it, it's just two pieces of rock_

Only two pieces of rock crushing her to a pulp facing her in front of Unalaq.

_...Right._

**.**

Korra's eyes frost over with a brilliantly glowing alabaster shade of ice.

**.**

Asami's falling and she _doesn't know what to think_ except that she hates falling.

_Hatehatehatehatehatehatesit._

**.**

Returning to the Tree of Time, back in her own body, after defeating Unavaatu, after cleansing the lord of all dark spirits, after reuniting with Raava, Korra should feel really, really, _really_ proud of herself.

Only she doesn't.

There's always one more thing she has to do before she achieves a sense of finality, the sense of accomplishment.

She should come back to the Material World. Or the Spirit World. Or the whatever World. If all goes well, she would return one day, sooner or later: just not now.

She's going to leave the portals open. She will no longer be the Avatar as the people once knew her as. The Avatar who was the bridge between two worlds.

The purple energy over the rift has faded after Unavaatu's cleansing and defeat. And the yawning black gap slashed in the very fabric of space and time is rumbling shut. Closing. The Tree of Time healing its domain after close and utter annihilation. Almost gone.

Normally that would be a good thing.

Tenzin asks what she's doing and why in the _world_ is she running away from his hug?

Korra doesn't hesitate before she makes a wild nosedive towards the ground.

_(i would—i would walk through the storms)_

The air inside the pit is freezing and the humidity nonexistent.

And she falls. But this time she doesn't scream. Doesn't scream even as the air gusts on either side of her howl and rage a song of death by ice in her ears, doesn't scream as the suffocating blanket of darkness presses down on her like she's being crushed in between two slabs of rock all over again. Because she's not the one scared of falling now.

The pit snaps shut above her plummeting figure.

**.**

She urges herself to go faster.

Faster faster faster.

All she has to do is catch up.

blink_blink_**blink**

flash_flash_**flash**

Raava?

_Go._

**.**

Asami really, really, _really_ hates falling and she makes it known to the other people plummeting into the depths of this hellhole with her by screaming.

Not that there is anyone falling down with her.

But something hard and warm slams into her and Asami instantly panics, clutching onto the wriggling body like it's the only thing in the world that will keep her alive. And it _will_ keep her alive because it's solid and tangible and it has a pulse.

_It has a pulse._

It's alive. It's alive. _It'saliveit'saliveit'salive._

"Just hold on!"

So Asami blindly holds on. Wrapped into a close and tight embrace. Warm breath, so different from the freezing cold air gusting around them—Asami and the thing that's alive hugging her—tickles the tip of her ear.

"It's okay. You'll be okay. _We'll be okay."_

"No, we won't be okay!" Asami who's still scared of falling screams at the top of her lungs as they zoom downward at even faster rates.

"Yes, we will!"

They're accelerating and Asami almost loses it right then and there.

_"Then please, whoever you are, don't let go of me!"_

Even though she knows who is holding onto her. Or at least she has a good guess as to whom.

Korra grants her frenzied request and doesn't let go.

_[ – you and i will never die – ]_

**.**

When their flailing bodies meet in midair, Korra knows that Asami's scared of falling (the memory is further solidified when Asami screams and clutches onto her so tightly that Korra thinks she might just have lost blood circulation in her right hand) and so she instantly pulls the heiress into her arms and tucks her chin right above the crook of Asami's neck, hugging her fiercely and reminding her that she's

_(always_

_always_

_**always**)_

been there and she

_(always_

_always_

_**always**)_

will be.

**.**

Asami makes it a point to clutch onto Korra like a lifeline when they're

_(falling_

_falling_

_**falling**)_

And Korra wraps her warm and comforting arms around her, mumbling soft reassurances into her ear all the way down without fail while they

_(plummet_

_towards_

_**nothing**)_

**.**

She had been struggling through a storm her entire life, walking through the challenges that were thrown her way. Some with difficulty, yet others with ease. But in the end, she was always fighting. Physically and mentally and emotionally.

She told herself she continued for her home. For her family. For Republic City. For Mako, for Bolin. For a legacy left to her by those who came before. For Raava, for Aang, for Wan. For the title of the Avatar itself. For the spirits. For the humans. For the world. For _herself._

But for Asami, too. Always Asami.

And maybe, just maybe, she's the most important of them all.

**.**

They'll battle the dark spirits that appear like wisps of smoke from a fire; they'll struggle through black nothingness with eyes spinning in their sockets from constant vertigo, and they'll nearly die many times—_together_—and although there are no northern or southern lights to prostrate before and pray to in the world of shadows, Korra doesn't need to pray to any more spirits. Ever. Not Aang, or Roku, or Kyoshi. Not even Wan.

Not when they're all gone from her life.

She'll only need to pray to the spirits inside of her. Her life. Because she's got her wish, that she and Asami are finally together again—

—although in the beginning, deep in the dark slums of Republic City, there was Anyu—

—and in the middle, deep in the clinging black tendrils of guilt, Asami left—

—but in the end, deep in the bleak realm of a perpetual night, Korra finds her stars.

**.**

Fairy tales start with "once upon a time". They always, always, always do. But even though _once upon a times_ may come to pass, _happily ever afters_ don't always happen.

But at some point, she'll hit a barrier, past which everything she's worked for is worth it, past which she has herself again; a place where dreams come true and _fairy tales_ are actually worth telling. And Korra may be struggling through a literal hole in the world with Asami, a hole in the world that sinks so deep into a void that there's never any end, but right now she's flying higher than any time she had ever been before.

And truthfully, it isn't a happily ever after. At least, it isn't a traditional happily ever after. They _are_ in a literal hellhole. But it's close. So very close. No matter where they are, no matter where she is, this is what Korra's been waiting to hear. It's been a long time coming, but like all good things it has finally arrived—

**.**

There were many different ways the story could have started:

_(when they made a promise to each other)_

_(when asami died)_

_(when korra murdered a woman)_

_(when vaatu gave the avatar a choice)_

_(when korra waited)_

_(when asami sank into the darkness)_

_(when korra followed her in)_

_(and when the light appeared in the void)_

_[—but it only truly starts—]_

**.**

—in a place infinitely darker than the depths of the realm of Koh, when an exhausted girl with emeralds for eyes tells a bone-weary Avatar _"I love you"._

**.**

**.**

**(eight years later)**

**.**

**.**

He walks down the cold and empty street, spiky black hair ruffled and unkempt as the pounding sheets of rain falling from the dark clouds that hang above the earth batter the sidewalks and his hunched shoulders with watery bullets alike.

One dark day precisely eight years ago, Vaatu had attacked, Asami went tumbling into a pit of shadows, and Korra had followed her in. Not a hide nor hair of them had been seen since and they were presumed dead.

Why does he know this? Because it's his twenty-seventh birthday. His ex-girlfriends both vanished into nothing on his_birthday._

He can only hope that they're happy. This birthday isn't spent with Bolin, who is still in Republic City training to become the Chief of the metalbending police. Spent without his parents, of course; spent without Korra, spent without Asami.

Spent alone. Comfortably, thankfully, heartbreakingly, _alone._

He walks another few steps, his mind elsewhere, and he bumps into someone in his distraction. Someone smaller and slighter than he is. But it's a hard enough knock that causes the person he ran into to stumble a few feet to the side.

"Oh!" Mako snaps out of his reverie, awkwardly shifting his pace to jog towards the recuperating figure. "Hey, I'm sorry—!" he begins to apologize, all the while staring into a pair of vivid and wide green eyes—

_—Asami?!—_

—but no, it isn't Asami, although Mako can see the resemblance to her in the little girl—they had the exact same eyes.

"Watch it!" she pouts, her lower lip jutting out along with an irritated expression, a jaded expression that has absolutely no place on a girl's face as young as this one, who couldn't be older than seven or eight.

But it's a familiar look. Mako can't say he hasn't seen it before. It's familiar because it's the same look Korra had been wearing right before she jumped into that spirits-forsaken pit and it only serves to stab another sharp knife of pain and loss into his heart.

The girl's already walking away, but Mako finds himself stumbling after her, his pale hands tightly locked around his wet red scarf. "Hey! Hey, kid! Wait for a moment!"

Maybe it's the urgency and desperation in his voice, or maybe it's because this little girl didn't know any better, but she stops and turns around, eyeing him warily.

"What?"

"Do...do you know me?" the firebender finds himself asking in a pitifully tiny voice.

"...No. Should I?" She sounds guilty now.

"I..." Mako hesitates, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I just thought—"

"Reina!" A teenage boy with dark chestnut-colored hair and pale green eyes charges towards them, his thin and dark eyebrows drawn together with relief. "Oh, thank the spirits you're safe!" He throws a suspicious glare at Mako, who quietly backs off, his golden gaze misty and hooded, before the boy wraps an arm protectively around the girl. Reina._Reina, Reina, Reina._ This little girl who must be his sister.

"C'mon, let's get you home."

_(all these years i have wandered)_

Mako silently watches the girl and her brother leave and surprisingly enough it leaves a blunt and painful ache in his heart.

**.**

Another eight years pass by like the flowing crystal water Korra used to love bending when the White Lotus announces that they have found the new Avatar.

Her name is Reina.

As Mako watches, one among the thousands of people cramped in the tiny square in front of City Hall, the sixteen-year-old version of the little girl he met on the streets nervously addresses the crowd an hour before dawn. He still can't help but notice the bright sparkle of her green eyes even visible in the shadowy light customary of predawn hours; he can't help but be reminded of the time when a seventeen-year-old Korra first arrived in Republic City and long after tearing up a long stretch of street finally gave her speech to all.

_("as your new avatar!")_

He sees both of them—Korra, and Asami—in this new Avatar.

_Avatar Reina._

It has a nice enough ring to it.

Somewhere deep down inside of him, in a place he had worked to push out of his mind, there's a sense of loss. Loss and pain, because he knows that every time he looks at this _Reina_ he will be reminded of the two woman who both stepped into his life, each for a little while at least, before they stepped out and found each other. And even if he didn't want it, even if he hates it—which he tells himself (angrily) that he doesn't—he's simply _bound_ to them in that way forever.

Korra would say that _it's okay. It'll all be okay. He'll be okay. They'll be okay._

Because somewhere—maybe still in whatever lay beyond the bottomless confines of that pit, maybe looking down onto the dusty earth in the Spirit World—they're together again.

**.**

Reina has had the memories for as long as she can remember.

They're strange memories. A near-constant train of thoughts that has set up camp near the very back of her mind. Flashes of a horde of dark-colored creatures with bright purple and green markings imprinted upon what seemed to be their heads. A monster treading through the waves. Watching a man with ragged salt-and-pepper hair through the bars of a metal prison cell. Once, a sharp and intense burst of fear that she couldn't explain but left her crying softly out in the middle of the night with an accelerated heartbeat and cold sweat dotting her smooth forehead.

But always, when one of these thoughts are floating at the surface of her mind, a single and final sweeping gesture of warmth that when it leaves she always feels empty without for a moment or two afterwards.

She can't quite place her finger on it but the dark-skinned girl that sometimes appears to her in a dream smiles and says that, _"Hey, look, it's okay, it's always okay"_ and tells her not to worry.

She was revealed as the new Avatar today, in front of the whole world. The Mako man she met—no matter what came out of his mouth, she still can't shake off the feeling that she knows him. That she knows those amber eyes, his lean stature, the ruffled black hair.

_"Because you have."_

Reina turns around and spots the dark-skinned girl again. "Huh?"

_"He was my friend,"_ this girl frowns, sitting smartly down on nothing across from Reina, so it appears that she's simply floating in nothingness, in orange-yellow clouds. _"Although I have to say..."_ Something like a tiny sigh escapes past her lips. _"...I should have treated him much better."_

"I know you," Reina says quietly. "You're...you're that Avatar before me. The one Vaatu killed right before you cleansed him."

The words sounded a lot better in her head than coming out of her mouth.

_"Oh, is that what they're telling you?"_ the Avatar lightly says, eying Reina with amusement. _"Well...yeah. As in I_ am_the Avatar before you. And no, I didn't...er, _perish_right after that battle with Vaatu. Or Unavaatu...or Vaatulaq...oh, whatever, it doesn't matter!"_ She sighs._ "Oh, in any case...I'm Korra."_

"Avatar Korra," Reina nods in recognition, clasping a palm over her fist. "What's up? Err, I mean...um...how are you doing...?"

Korra, much to Reina's surprise, only begins to laugh. _"I'm doing fine, thanks. Well...as fine as I can be while being dead, you know."_ She huffs in apparent exasperation: _"I can't _bend_while I'm dead! It's horrible. Really boring, too. I thought that Aang was lying when he said that we all__—I mean, the past Avatars...not that they're here anymore—often watch the going-ons of the new Avatar taking—__"_ And her eyes widen in shock, as if she's just realized what she's saying. _"Oh spirits, actually, never mind. Forget I said anything."_ She offers Reina a crooked smile that only assures the current Avatar that _whatever_ the old Avatars did in their abundance of free time, it was no good.

"...Oh?" Reina asks, not really sure what to say.

This girl, this Korra, she leans down behind Reina and her warm breath grazes the tip of the Earth Kingdom girl's ear.

_"Well, that's not what I came to you for,_ _anyway."_

There's a slight pause.

_"You'll be a great Avatar, I'm sure,"_ Korra promises. _"You'll finish what I started. But...,"_ and her voice acquires a sad note to it, _"I know that you've experienced grief and sorrow and anger before. And that's normal. It's part of what makes us human. But whatever you end up doing, Reina, don't let those emotions dictate what you end up doing. In the end, whatever you do, it will be what you _allow_ yourself to do. That which you desire most will be yours and_ yours alone _to give and take...each hour of your life, your self-preservation, is an hour that you allow yourself to have._

_"And tell me, would you kill to save a life? Would you kill to prove you're_ _right?"_ Her lips curl into a bitter smile as Reina gapes soundlessly at her._ "Maybe you would—oh, maybe you never _think_ that you would, but grief does weird things to people. And if you let that grief drive you to extremes, to things that you will never ordinarily have done—you'll regret it. You'll regret it to your dying day. You'll be thinking on your actions from that point, and every dark hour in between to the day you—you...um, excuse_ _me"_—and she sheepishly smiles—_"rot in your grave. It's simply not the right thing to do."_

Reina slowly comprehends what this Water Tribe woman is saying. "So you mean, I shouldn't kill anyone?"

_"Hmm. I wouldn't say that...but,"_ and she nods as if she's made her mind up, _"no one should kill for the sake of killing, for the sake of revenge—a 'peace at heart', if you will. There is no peace in that. Only darkness."_

Reina cocks her head to the side, drinking in this woman's words. "How do you know?"

And Korra tilts her head. Holds her gaze—ocean blue against leaf green. And then she says quietly, _"Because I've lived by it—and died by it. Some said too early."_ She sighs, still staring into Reina's eyes. And then she bows her head, slowly fading into nothingness.

Her last, cryptic words wrap around Reina like a comforting puff of spring breeze:

_"And in truth, kid?_

_"You have the greenest eyes I've ever seen."_

**.**

Avatar Reina somehow manages to find him and ask him outright after her speech, "Do I know you?"

_("do...do you know me?")_

The lie immediately comes tumbling out past his lips. And it's obvious that it's a fib. He says it a little too quickly. Flinches. Fingers nervously pluck at the hem of his coat, crimping the gray fabric in several wrinkled waves. Eyes slightly drift to the left, over the Avatar's shoulder, so they don't have to meet the Avatar's piercing green gaze.

"...No. I'm sorry. I don't think I do."

_(rise up, follow me, come away is the call)_

"Oh." Her cheeks flush with the barest hint of pink, giving her a slightly embarrassed appearance as she rubs the nape of her neck. "I mean...er, this is going to sound so stupid, but I can't help but think that I've seen you from...somewhere." The edges of her thick eyebrows twitch upward in a question.

_You have, eight years ago. And maybe also in a life that has passed away. Maybe I knew you well, maybe I knew both of you well, until the one day sixteen years ago, when you both fell into the pit. When neither of you came out, or were ever seen again._

_Maybe._

He doesn't answer her.

She stubbornly sticks out a hand, anyways. Sticks it out with a sheepish and crooked grin that leaned towards the left slapped disarmingly across her face. Sticks it out with bright and vibrant green eyes the color of—_what did Korra always say?_—sparkling emeralds locked onto Mako's downcast face. Sticks her hand out, because she's pushing. (Always, always pushing.)

"Well, um...hi, in any case. I'm Reina." A light chuckle. "But you knew that already, didn't you?"

Mako's eyes are still refusing to move right to meet Reina's, and instead he stares fixedly at the looming grandeur of City Hall behind her. The two of them remain like that for a while—Reina's hand sitting patiently a little ways in front of his chest, waiting to be acknowledged; Mako refusing to move or look at anything besides his fixed vantage point.

Behind the Avatar, the sun breaks over the horizon, over the City Hall, obliterating the muted shadows of dawn in a burst of golden light. Its warmth streams downwards, pooling underneath their feet to form a shifting lake of liquid gold.

The Avatar's hand is still there, still waiting, dappled with moving layers of the sun's rays, so Mako tears his eyes away from the sunrise to look at that for a moment. A long train of memories from a time past flashes across his pained expression before the brilliant light of daybreak clears the storm clouds away and he finally meets the Avatar in the eye, raising his arm to firmly grasp her proffered hand.

And they stand there, still and silent, underneath the fiery glow of the rising sun for a few more breaths:

"Hi," he replies softly in return. "I'm Mako."

**.**

**.**

_[and the story goes on...on...on..._

_that's how the story goes]_

* * *

**fin**

* * *

**end notes** | aaaand that's it. i think you've noticed that i've never kissed anyone before. 9_9 i gave up editing about halfway through, so if there are mistakes, i apologize. in any case, i think i need to stop writing for like a month because this took so much out of me and if i don't stop writing monstrosities like this i'm going to go crazy...well, as always: read, rate, review, and fav! :)


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